Fabrication of aggregation-induced emission based fluorescent nanoparticles and their biological imaging application: recent progress and perspectives

Aggregation-induced emission (AIE) dyes have received wide-spread concern since their inception. Several types of AIE-based fluorescent nanoparticle (FNP) have been developed, and the potential applications of these FNPs have also been explored. Recent studies of AIE-based FNPs in biological areas have suggested that they show promise as bio-materials for cell imaging and other biomedical applications. This article reviews recent progress in the synthesis of AIE-based FNPs via non-covalent, covalent and novel one-pot strategies, and the subsequent cell-imaging of those AIE-based FNPs. Many successes have been achieved, and there is still plenty of space for the development of AIE-based FNPs as new bio-materials.