Tetraphenylethylene-based giant emissive hexagonal metallaprisms for biomolecule sensing

The development of giant emissive metallacages is not only a synthetic challenge but also important for their applications. Herein, we report a type of tetraphenylethylene (TPE)-based emissive hexagonal metallaprism with diameters as large as 3.7 nm, which represents one of the largest TPE-based metallacages. They can interact with polymers and small molecules via electrostatic interactions in different modes. They form dense aggregations with DNA, which would inhibit the molecular motions and offer enhanced emission. However, photoinduced electron transfer from nucleotides to metallaprisms occurs after complexation, so they show decreased emission for ATP and ADP. This study provides a type of giant emissive metallaprism for selective biosensing, which will guide the future design of metallacages for bio-applications.