Electron-Withdrawing Substituents Allow Boosted NIR-II Fluorescence in J-Type Aggregates for Bioimaging and Information Encryption

Developing molecular fluorophores with enhanced fluorescence in aggregate state for the second near-infrared (NIR-II) imaging is highly desirable but remains a tremendous challenge due to the lack of reliable design guidelines. Herein, we report an aromatic substituent strategy to construct highly bright NIR-II J-aggregates. Introduction of electron-withdrawing substituents at 3,5-aryl and meso positions of classic boron dipyrromethene (BODIPY) skeleton can promote slip-stacked J-type arrangement and further boost NIR-II fluorescence of J-aggregates via increased electrostatic repulsion and intermolecular hydrogen bond interaction. Notably, NOBDP-NO₂ with three nitro groups (−NO₂) shows intense NIR-II fluorescence at 1065 nm and high absolute quantum yield of 3.21 % in solid state, which can be successfully applied in bioimaging, high-level encoding encryption, and information storage. Moreover, guided by this electron-withdrawing substituent strategy, other skeletons (thieno-fused BODIPY, aza-BODIPY, and heptamethine cyanine) modified with −NO₂ are converted into J-type aggregates with enhanced NIR-II fluorescence, showing great potential to convert aggregation caused emission quenching (ACQ) dyes into brilliant J-aggregates. This study provides a universal method for construction of strong NIR-II emissive J-aggregates by rationally manipulating molecular packing and establishing relationships among molecular structures, intermolecular interactions, and fluorescence properties.