Rational design of 1, 2, 4, 5-tetraphenyl-1H-imidazole-based AIEgens with tunable intramolecular charge transfer and restricted intramolecular rotation processes for multifunctional sensing.

Aggregation-induced emission fluorogens (AIEgens) with intramolecular charge transfer (ICT) characteristic are widely used in the detection of various analytes owing to their highly tunable fluorescence emission properties. However, facilely synthesis of AIEgens with ICT characteristic for multiple sensing is still rare and limited in use. In this work, two new AIEgens of 1,2-bis(4-alkoxycarbonylphenyl)-4,5-bis(4-methoxyphenyl)-1H-imidazole (AMI) and its hydrolyzed derivative 1,2-bis(4-carboxylphenyl)-4,5-bis(4-methoxyphenyl)-1H-imidazole (CMI) were facilely synthesized with donor-π-acceptor (D-π-A) structures.