Stimuli‐Responsive AIEgens

The unique advantages and the exciting application prospects of AIEgens have triggered booming developments in this area in recent years. Among them, stimuli‐responsive AIEgens have received particular attention and impressive progress, and they have been demonstrated to show tremendous potential in many fields from physical chemistry to materials science and to biology and medicine. Here, the recent achievements of stimuli‐responsive AIEgens in terms of seven most representative types of stimuli including force, light, polarity, temperature, electricity, ion, and pH, are summarized. Based on typical examples, it is illustrated how each type of systems realize the desired stimuli‐responsive performance for various applications. The key work principles behind them are ultimately deciphered and figured out to offer new insights and guidelines for the design and engineering of the next‐generation stimuli‐responsive luminescent materials for more broad applications. Aggregation‐induced emission (AIE) luminogens (AIEgens) are one of the optimal choices for smart luminescent materials to be applied in real life and they have sparked much of the current interest in the smart materials area. Therefore, a myriad of AIE materials with diverse stimuli‐responsive properties have been developed in recent years, and they exhibit broad application prospects.