Novel CO₂ Fluorescence Turn-On Quantification Based on a Dynamic AIE-Active Metal-Organic Framework

Traditional CO₂ sensing technologies suffer from the disadvantages of being bulky and cross-sensitive to interferences such as CO and H₂O, these issues could be properly tackled by innovating a novel fluorescence-based sensing technology. Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), which have been widely explored as versatile fluorescence sensors, are still at a standstill for aggregation-induced emission (AIE), and no example of MOFs showing a dynamic AIE activity has been reported yet. Herein, we report a novel MOF, which successfully converts the aggregation-caused quenching of the autologous ligand molecule to be AIE-active upon framework construction and exhibits bright fluorescence in a highly viscous environment, resulting in the first example of MOFs exhibiting a real dynamic AIE activity. Furthermore, a linear CO₂ fluorescence quantification for mixed gases in the concentration range of 2.5-100% was thus well-established. These results herald the understanding and advent of a new generation in all solid-state fluorescence fields.