| This thesis presents molecular guidelines to design the efficient organic photoacoustic imaging (PA) and photothermal therapy (PTT) agents, which are evaluated in vitro and in vivo to demonstrate the proof-of-concepts. Firstly, monomeric porphyrin units are transformed into photostable polymeric backbones, forming a donor-acceptor (D-A) structured conjugated polymer (CP) with red-shifted and significantly enhanced absorption and high photothermal conversion efficiency tumor ablation. Following that, a molecular engineering approach to design CPs with high PA and photothermal performance is illustrated by systematically investigating the relationship between structure and performance. Furthermore, the molecular engineering approach afore-mentioned is applied to design a CP with strong NIR-II absorption, which exhibits much better efficacy than the conventional NIR-I PA agents. In addition, an aggregation-induced emission (AIE) molecule with strong absorptivity and ultrabright emissive capability in solid states is designed for synergetic targeted NIR-II fluorescence and NIR-I PA imaging of brain tumors. |
