A ruthenium-based aggregation-induced enhanced emission luminophore as efficient protein staining agent

A new ruthenium complex with tetraphenylethylene (TPE) unit (abbreviated as RuPhen-TPE) has been designed and successfully synthesized in this work. The phenomenon of aggregation-induced enhanced emission (AIEE) for this new ruthenium complex has been reported for the first time in this work. Most importantly, this new ruthenium complex with AIEE effect has been further employed as a novel protein staining agent and also exhibited excellent protein staining properties, which may open a new avenue to develop new kinds of protein staining agents in the future.