K. Kazlauskas, G. Kreiza, Eglė Arbačiauskienė
Oct 21, 2014
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Influential Citations
17
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Journal
Journal of Physical Chemistry C
Abstract
Organic nanoparticles exhibiting tunable emission properties in response to morphology changes are attractive for application in low-cost fluorescence sensors, e.g., for sensing vapors, temperature, etc., and therefore, convenient ways for altering nanoparticle morphology are highly desired. In this work, phenylenediacetonitrile-based molecules featuring aggregation-induced emission enhancement which are suitable for the realization of morphology-tunable nanoparticles by precipitation method have been designed. The morphology tuning was enabled by rational functionalization of the molecular backbone with pyrazole moieties and adjacent alkoxy/cyclic side-groups, which were varied in size and branchiness. The longer alkoxy chains generally caused formation of crystalline nanostructures, while shorter ones resulted in preferably amorphous nanoaggregates. Remarkably, the sharp tuning of the nanoparticle morphology (crystalline → amorphous → crystalline) with the subsequent high-contrast emission switching (em...