Scaffold-Free Efficient Light-Harvesting Nanoparticles Based on One-Pot Self-Assembly of Donor–Acceptor Aggregation-Induced Emission Luminogens

Constructing highly efficient artificial light-harvesting (LH) systems via a scaffold-free approach for capturing and utilizing light energy to emulate photosynthesis-inspired energy transfer processes is a great challenge. Herein, we report an efficient light-harvesting nanoparticle (LHN) based on two derivatives of tetraphenylethylene as a donor/acceptor (D/A) pair in a skeleton compact and effective stacking prepared by simple ultrasound-assisted self-assembly within ∼1 h in water for effective aggregation-induced emission (AIE) effect and intermolecular energy transfer. By simply adjusting the D/A mixture ratio, the LHN shows tunable multicolor emission (from cyan to near-infrared) with a remarkable energy transfer efficiency of 96.5% at a D/A ratio of 50:1 and attains a high antenna effect of 79.2 at a D/A ratio of 4000:1. Importantly, the LHN exhibits a nearly pure white light emission with color coordinates of (0.32, 0.35) at a D/A ratio of 300:1 with a high quantum yield of 51%. Moreover, our LHN shows high biocompatibility and brightness for cellular imaging in MCF-7 cells over 3 days. Compared to the direct excitation of acceptors in the uptaken LHN, it shows an approximately 14-fold enhancement for cell imaging brightness. This simple and effective fabrication strategy opens up possibilities for large-scale AIEgen-based light-harvesting systems as tunable multicolor luminescent materials and great potential applications in the fields of white light materials and real-time cellular imaging.