Macromolecules that incorporate a metal as building blocks are interesting and valuable materials, because many of them can carry out the functions of both macromolecular and metal-containing units. Metal-containing macromolecules have been developed as functional materials on the basis of their electroactive, photoactive, bioactive, magnetic and other interesting properties.

 In contrast to organic aromatics, our metalla-aromatic complex “carbolong complex” exhibited some interesting properties, like aggregation-induced emission enhancement, broad and strong absorption, photoacoustic imaging, and photothermal effect. Compared with the good stability and easy modification of the carbolong complex, we can easily prepared some functional matallopolymers with carbolong complexes. in recent years, we have achieved breakthroughs in photothermal macromolecule.

 In 2017, we have synthesized the first photothermal metal-containing macromolecules, which shape can be viewed as “head-tail”, from the chemically link of a photothermal “carbolong complex” (head) with a PEG (tail). This amphiphilic photothermal macromolecule represented a new photothermal material, which has been demonstrated to be served as a potential photothermal agent. Recently, we reported a new photothermal metalla-aromatic complex induced by J-aggregates. This photothermal complex can be modified a methacrylate group as a monomer, and co-polymerized with oligo-(ethylene glycol) methacrylate to afford a new type of stimuli-responsive polymer. These two works were both selected as the cover paper of Polymer Chemistry journal.