Synthesis of triphenylamine (TPA) dimers and applications in cell imaging

A variety of triphenylamine (TPA) are shown to undergo C–C bond formation using quinone-based chloranil/H + reagent as the metal free oxidative system to afford triphenylamine dimers very conveniently. Then, TPA dimers have been further converted to the emission color tunable compounds via simple chemical transformations. Importantly, we established the primary relationship between chemical structures with the optical behaviors from the aspect of emission (λ em ) wavelength, fluorescence life time (τ) and aggregation-induced-emission (AIE) property in this work. The further application of these compounds to cell imaging was fully demonstrated.