Congratulations to Guanpeng Lyu, Thomas Southern and Bethan L. Charles for their work on the paper entitled “Aggregation-induced emission from silole-based luminophores embedded in organic–inorganic hybrid host” which has just been accepted for publication in the Journal of Materials Chemistry C. 

This paper reports the incorporation of silole-based luminophores, which exhibit aggregation-induced emission (AIE) behaviour into a photoactive organic-inorganic hybrid host, named ureasils. To achieve this, two sample series with varying doping concentrations were prepared, based on either the parent silole AIEgen, named DMTPS or the silylated analogue DMTPS-Sil, which were physically doped or covalently grafted, respectively, to the ureasil host via a sol-gel synthetic process. Our results, including steady-state and photoluminescence characterisation, as well as confocal microscopy, revealed that covalent grafting led to reduced scattering loss, improved chemical stability and enhanced PLQY (up to ca. 40%). Moreover, the excitation energy transfer was shown to occur from the optically active ureasil host to the embedded DMTPS-Sil with an efficiency of almost 70%. This study highlights the potential for designing complex photoluminescent hybrid polymers exhibiting an enhanced AIE response for solid-state optical applications.

We would also like to thank our collaborators, Maxime Roger, Philippe Gerbier and Sébastien Clément from University of Montpellier in France, for their help in the synthesis and structural characterisation of the AIE molecules.

“Aggregation-induced emission from silole-based lumophores embedded in organic–inorganic hybrid host” G. Lyu, T. J. F. Southern, B. L. Charles, M. Roger, P. Gerbier, S. Clément and R. C. Evans, J. Mater. Chem. C, 2021, DOI: 10.1039/d1tc02794h.