A luminescent dye@MOF platform: emission fingerprint relationships of volatile organic molecules

Self-assembly of luminescent moieties into porous metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) has generated many luminescent platforms for probing volatile organic molecules (VOMs). However, most of those explored thus far have only been based on the luminescence intensity of one transition, which is not efficient for probing different VOMs. We have synthesized a luminescent MOF material containing 1D nanotube channels, and further developed a luminescent dye@MOF platform to realize the probing of different VOMs by tuning the energy transfer efficiency between two different emissions. The dye@MOF platform exhibits excellent fingerprint correlation between the VOM and the emission peak-height ratio of ligand to dye moieties. The dye@MOF sensor is self-calibrating, stable, and instantaneous, thus the approach should be a very promising strategy to develop luminescent materials with unprecedented practical applications.