Surface motifs regulated aggregation induced emission in gold–silver nanoclusters

Abstract

Aggregation-induced emission (AIE) is a recently developed strategy to design highly luminescent metal nanoclusters (NCs), which can be controlled by the surface motifs [M(I)-SR] of NCs. This communication is an account to understand the AIE in gold silver (AuAg) NCs, where the Au(I)–thiolate motif is engineered by doping different amount of Ag in Au NCs. Investigation revealed the great impact of Au(I)–thiolate motifs on the AIE of AuAg NCs.