Recent Advances and Future Prospects of Aggregation-induced Emission Carbohydrate Polymers.

Aggregation-induced emission (AIE) is an abnormal phenomenon that has sparked great attention for diverse applications in different fields. In particular, the fabrication and biological imaging applications of AIE-active fluorescent organic nanoparticles (FONs) have become a focus in the emerging and promising fields. A large number of AIE-active polymeric nanoprobes have recently been fabricated through different strategies. The advances and progress in this direction have also recently been summarized by some groups. However, the fabrication and biomedical applications of AIE-active FONs based on carbohydrate polymers and AIE-active dyes are quite rare and limited. In this feature article, the recently reported AIE-active FONs with different structures and applications based on AIE-active dyes and carbohydrate polymers are highlighted, and the major current limitations and development tendencies are also discussed.