Aiming at the construction of novel luminescent materials for practical use, a new type of AIEgen-branched rotaxane dendrimers with up to 42 TPE units precisely distributed with the dendrimer skeletons have been successfully synthesized. Attributed to such high-density topological arrangements of AIEgens, these novel rotaxane-branched dendrimers revealed interesting generation-dependent AIE behaviors. Moreover, taking advantage of the efficient Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) process, novel artificial light-harvesting systems (LHSs) were further successfully constructed by the employment of ESY as energy acceptors, which revealed significantly enhanced photocatalytic performances in the functionalization of C-H bonds along with the increase in dendrimer generations, thus indicating an impressive generation effect.
