Water-soluble conjugated polymers have been attracted a great deal of attention because of their unique optoelectronic properties, which may serve as a basis for a new generation of optoelectronic devices and biochemical detection. Their peculiar properties stem from the combination of optoelectronic properties of conventional conjugated polymers and water solubility induced by ionic nature of polyelectrolytes. Their optoelectronic properties can be easily tuned through the structural alteration of the conjugated structure of the polymer backbones, and the ionic functionality endows them with exceptional features such as electrostatic interaction with oppositely charged species, a high sensitivity toward fluorescence quenchers and fluorescence change with aggregation.The aggregation-induced blue-to-green solution fluorescence change of 2,1,3-benzotihadiazole (BT) units in polymer backbones was used for sensing of oppositely charged species. In a dilute, well-dissolved ionic conjugated polymer solution, exciton transport can be approximated by a one-dimensional random walk within an isolated polymer chain. However, if the polymers are aggregated within close proximity to each other, interchain exciton migration becomes possible, and a three-dimensional random walk becomes available to the migrating exciton. In this study, we investigate aggregation-enhanced exciton migration in a anionic conjugated polymers containing green- and red-emitting exciton trap sites, respectively. We found that this polymer exhibited a visually noticeable blue-to-green and blue-to-red fluorescence color change upon aggregation with oppositely charged protein.

Synthesis of anionic conjugated polyelectrolytes for biological sensing using intermolecular energy transfer

247th National Meeting (2014)

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