More interestingly, upon addition of some water to the system
of HNA with 50 equiv. of CN− in acetonitrile/water solvents (from
0 to 1:9, v/v), the emission intensity of 504 nm did not decrease
instead to increase gradually. As shown in Fig. 6, in a good solvent of CH3CN, complex was well dispersed and displayed relative weaker
fluorescence intensity of their “solution” state. With water volume
fraction increasing from 0 to 90%, the emission intensity of about
504 nm enhanced gradually exhibiting typical AIEE characters. As
a contrast, only HNA without addition of CN− did not show any
AIEE effect (Supplementary data, Fig. S10).