Fluorescence Turn-On Visualization of MicroscopicProcesses for Self-Healing Gels by AIEgens and AnticounterfeitingApplication

Self-healing gels are emerging as promising materials for various human-interfaced applications. Unveiling microscopic processes for self-healing gels is crucial for not only understanding self-healing mechanisms but also guiding materials design, which is, however, hardly achieved due to the lack of direct and effective approaches. Herein, covalent bond-induced emission of AIEgen is, for the first time, utilized for establishing a fluorescence turn-on strategy to visualize mi-croscope processes for self-healing gels. Such strategy allows the in-situ monitoring of gelation and self-healing processes with extremely low background. Besides, the fluorescence also endows self-healing gels with diverse emission, especially white light emission. By coding these multi-color fluorescent self-healing gels, fluorescent codes with stealth effect are successfully fabricated with features of stretchability, wearability, reusability and diversity, performing superiorly in anti-counterfeiting. These results give rise to...