Aggregation-Induced Emission: A Trailblazing Journey to the Field of Biomedicine

The emergence of the aggregation-induced emission (AIE) concept significantly changes the cognition of the scientific community toward classic photophysical phenomena. More importantly, the AIE phenomenon has brought huge opportunities for the analysis of bioactive species, the monitoring of complicated biological processes, and the elucidation of key physiological and pathological behaviors. As a class of promising luminescent materials, AIE luminogens (AIEgens) are weakly or non-emissive in the form of isolated molecular species but emit particularly strong fluorescence in the aggregated and solid states. Motivated by the prominent advantages such as high brightness, large Stokes shift, excellent photostability, and good biocompatibility, AIEgen-based bioprobes have been widely explored in the field of biomedicine. This review aims to provide a systematic summary of the developmental history and an in-depth perspective of the current landscape of AIE in the biomedical field, with an emphasis on the disc...