Aggregation-induced
emission (AIE) molecules show all kinds of
application in biological research, chemical sensing, and medical
study. However, most of the reported molecules are based on the performance
of the single molecular entity. In this paper, a molecular system
for real-time sensing through combination of dynamic covalent chemistry
and aggregation-induced emission was rationally designed and tested.
The aggregated particles exhibit different fluorescence emission colors
upon the addition of various kinds of chemical reagents. The LC–MS
analysis reveals that the breakage, formation, and exchange of the
disulfide bonds in the molecular system occur spontaneously upon different
reagents (base/acid and cysteine), which leads to a change in the
proportion of different components in the system accordingly. Meanwhile,
the fluorescence emission of the AIE system exhibits blue/red shift
accompanied by intensity changes. Moreover, the particle size of the
aggregated molecules gradually increased with the change of the chemical
environment, which could be the result of the nucleus growing through
intermolecular hydrogen bonding among molecular components. Thus,
the chemical environment change results in the interactions of molecules,
which further leads to the variation of dynamic fluorescence emission
and morphology. The result represents a promising future for a dynamic
AIE molecular system in the bioimaging and sensing study.