Preparation of PEGylated polymeric nanoprobes with aggregation-induced emission feature through the combination of chain transfer free radical polymerization and multicomponent reaction: Self-assembly, characterization and biological imaging applications

Self-assembly of amphiphilic luminescent copolymers is a general route to fabricate fluorescent polymeric microparticles (FPMs). In this work, the FPMs with aggregation-induced emission (AIE) feature were fabricated via the combination of the chain transfer free radical polymerization and "one-pot" multicomponent reaction, which conjugated the aldehyde-containing AIE active dye AIE (CHO-An-CHO) and amino-terminated hydrophilic polymer (ATPPEGMA) using mercaptoacetic acid (MTA) as the "lock" molecule. The structure, chemical compositions, optical properties as well as biological properties of the PPEGMA-An-PPEGMA FPMs were characterized and investigated by means of a series of techniques and experiments in detail. We demonstrated the final copolymers showed amphiphilic properties, strong yellow fluorescence and high water dispersibility. Biological evaluation suggested that PPEGMA-An-PPEGMA FPMs possess low cytotoxicity and can be used for cell imaging. More importantly, many other AIE active FPMs are expected to be fabricated using the similar strategy because of the good substrate and monomer applicability of the multicomponent reaction and chain transfer living radical polymerization. Therefore, we could conclude that the strategy described in this work should be of great interest for fabrication of multifunctional AIE active nanoprobes for biomedical applications.