Enhancement approaches for photothermal conversion of donor–acceptor conjugated polymer for photothermal therapy: a review

Conjugated polymer (CP)-based photothermal materials have been widely acknowledged as a promising class of photothermal agents for biomedical applications. This is because of their light-harvesting ability, photothermal conversion efficiency, photostability, and favorable biocompatibility. Donor–acceptor (D–A) CPs, which are based on the evolution of CPs, have attracted considerable interest in this field because of their tunable absorption in the near-infrared biological window. This property enables their deep penetration into cancer sites, improving the efficiency of anti-cancer treatment. This review mainly focuses on the potential of D–A CP to achieve improved and efficient photothermal conversion, exploring its optimized advantages for photothermal therapy applications. Based on the general insight provided by the Jablonski diagram, the mechanism and related principles for activating photothermal conversion in CPs and D–A CP are proposed and discussed. This provides an overall understanding of the correlation between molecular CP nanomaterials and heat generation. This review presents the details of methodologies for the rational design of CP nanoparticles with efficient photothermal conversion ability, thus facilitating the use of CPs in biomedical diagnostic and therapeutic applications.