Research Projects

The project proposes a design strategy to develop task-specific functional solid-state emissive materials using the Aggregation Induced Emissive property of non-luminescent planar furan scaffold. The goal is to explore the mechanism of selective bacterial imaging and killing, their relationship with therapeutic performances, and investigate their chiroptical properties. The proposed luminescent materials will enable the development of functionalized luminescent fabrics by covalently grafting the designed AIEgens onto fibers. The design criteria in the molecule, which influence restricted rotations due to intermolecular interactions and disruption of molecular stacking in the solid-state, will lead to emission enhancement in the aggregated state. Furan-derived potential AIEgens for bacterial imaging and fluorescent textiles will be developed by installing furan to aromatic cores and reinforcing the scaffold with chirality and steric to minimize pi-pi stacking interaction. The design will feature wavelength tunability, robustness, thermal stability, and high quantum efficiency. The main experiments involve synthesizing the designed AIEgens and investigating and analyzing their chiroptical properties. The AIEgens will be covalently grafted to textile fibers to achieve luminescent fibers, whose fiber parameters and bacterial imaging and killing ability will be evaluated by ROS mechanism. The development of newer luminescent materials will unravel the potential of furan-based AIEgens, realize solid-state emission from non-emissive fluorescein, prepare smart fluorescent textile materials for bio-imaging, and explore newer families of axially chiral and helical AIEgens for enriching CPL molecules.