Two indole-based organic dyes were conveniently prepared and well characterized. The triphenylamine or carbazole moieties were bonded to the indole group acting as a potential electron donor, which can tune the HOMO and LUMO levels of the resultant dye, and another triphenylamine or carbazole group was linked to the pyrrole ring on the nitrogen atom, which was expected to suppress the aggregation of the dye in the solid state to some degree. These two dyes were utilized as dye sensitizers in dye-sensitized solar cells and demonstrated efficient photon-to-electron conversion properties.

A novel series of indole-based conjugated oligomers were synthesized by Wittig-Horner-Emmons olefination from the aryl-bridged bisindole aldehydes and the corresponding bisphosphonates. The introduction of indole into the light-emitting materials made these oligmers exhibit favorable properties. They were thermally stable, and the UV-vis spectra of the oligomers could be modulated by the arylenevinylene units; their PL and EL spectra also showed similar properties that can be further modulated. The highest luminance achieved in a device with the configuration ITO/PEDOT:PSS/oligomer/Ba/Al was 2536 cd/m2 at 7.5 V for oligomer P6, and the highest external EL quantum efficiency of 0.39% and luminous efficiency of 0.97 cd/A were attained by oligomer P1.

Three indole-based nonlinear optical (NLO) chromophores with changeable isolation groups were successfully introduced into the polymer backbone to yield a series of main-chain polyurethanes. Thanks to the mainchain structure and the advantages of the indole-based chromophores, all of the polymers show excellent transparency, good processability, thermal stability, and relatively good NLO effects. The obtained experimental results indicated that the polymer backbone, in addition to the linked isolation moieties, could act as isolation spacers in some special cases. The tested NLO results demonstrated that the isolation groups with apparent site-isolation effect might not benefit the macroscopic NLO effect of the resultant polymers.

A series of new carbazole-based luminophores (1-12) were synthesized and well characterized, which demonstrated aggregation-induced emission enhancement (AIEE) properties. The obtained experimental results demonstrated that the attachment of aromatic rotors to luminophore moieties would lead to the decreased quantum yields (measured in diluted solutions); the more rotors attached, the smaller the quantum yields tested. This further confirmed that the AIEE phenomena were caused by the restriction of the intramolecular vibrational and rotational motions in an indirect manner.

By modifying the synthetic procedure, the previous reported impossible approach was successfully utilized to construct new azo-chromophore-containing hyperbranched polymers (HP1 and HP2) from AB2 monomers through click chemistry reactions with the aid of copper(I) catalysis. The two polymers were soluble in organic solvents and well characterized. Thanks to the advantages of the hyperbranched polymeric structure, the two polymers demonstrated good NLO properties, making them promising candidates for the practical applications.