AIE-active Metal-organic Coordination Complexes Based on Tetraphenylethylene Unit and Their Applications

Tetraphenylethylene (TPE) and its derivatives, as the widely used aggregation-induced emission (AIE) fluorophores, have attracted rapidly growing interest in the fields of material science and biological technology due to their unique light-emitting mechanism—they are nearly non-emissive in dilute solution but emit brilliant fluorescence in the aggregate state because of the restriction of intramolecular motion. Coordination-driven self-assembly, which provides a highly effective method to put the individual chromophores together, is consistent with the AIE mechanism of TPE. During the past few years, some AIE-active metal-organic coordination complexes have been successfully constructed via coordination-driven self-assembly, and their AIE properties and applications have been investigated. In this review, we survey the recent progress on TPE-based metal-organic coordination complexes and their applications in fluorescence sensors, cell imaging, and light-emitting materials. We will introduce them from three different types of structures: metallacycles, metallacages, and metal-organic frameworks (MOFs).