LAUSR

Abstract Two tiphenylamine-based materials SM-1 and SM-2 were synthesized via simple one-step synthetic progress, which exhibits aggregation induced emission (AIE) in DMSO/H2O (1/9, v/v) solution due to intermolecular interactions and the restriction of intramolecular rotation in the aggregated state. The relationships between their structures and photophysical properties were studied via spectroscopic methods and density functional theory (DFT) calculations. The single crystal data of SM-1 and SM-2 revealed that multiple intermolecular interactions between molecules. Due to the excellent AIE nature of the two compounds. SM-1 and SM-2 were highly sensitive toward PA in the aggregated state. The quenching constant (KSV) of SM-2 was 5.33 × 104 M−1, and SM-1 was 1.1 × 105 M−1, with limit of detection (LOD) were 1.9 μM and 93 ppb for SM-1 and SM-2, respectively. For this reason, it shows that AIE materials are promising candidate in detection of explosives.