LAUSR

Nanomaterials that show aggregation-induced emission (AIE) have tremendous potential in sensors, bioimaging, phototherapy and organic light-emitting diodes. Although big progress have been achieved in developing AIE nanomaterials and their applications, one downside of most previously described AIE nanomaterials is that they required the complicated organic synthesis of precursor molecules and several preparative steps. Here, a biomass material, cellulolytic enzyme lignin (CEL), was used to prepare AIE nanoparticles (CEL-NPs) by a simple one-step self-assembly method. The J-aggregates were formed in CEL-NPs, which were shown to be the reason for fluorescence emission. The fluorescence of CEL-NPs demonstrated temperature-dependent property and better resistance to photobleaching than that of commercially available 4′,6-diamidino-2-phenylindole (DAPI) dye. The colloidal size of CEL-NPs could be tuned from 80 to 600 nm via changing CEL concentrations and solvent exchange. CEL-NPs showed nice colloidal stabil...