Liquid crystal block copolymer micelles with aggregation-induced emission from corona chains

Aggregation-induced emission (AIE) is a very useful tool to study the self-assembly process of block copolymers. However, most of the studies have been focused on the AIE process of the micelle core block. In this study, a typical AIEgen tetraphenylethylene (TPE) was introduced into the corona-forming block of the liquid crystal diblock copolymer. Although the coronal chains were still soluble in solution and the TPE group content was very low, due to the highly crowded and stretched chains, there was significant fluorescence emission after micellization. This provides a new research direction for the AIE process of diblock polymers and is of great significance for the study of the star micelle models.