Intrinsic White-Light-Emitting Metal-Organic Frameworks with Structurally Deformable Secondary Building Units

The secondary building units in metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are commonly well-defined metal-oxo clusters or chains with very limited structural strain. Herein, the structurally deformable haloplumbate units that are often observed in organolead halide perovskites have been successfully incorporated into MOFs. The resultant materials are a rare class of isoreticular MOFs exhibiting large Stokes-shifted broadband white-light emission, which is probably induced by self-trapped excitons from electron-phonon coupling in the deformable, zigzag [Pb₂ X₃ ]⁺ (X=Cl, Br, or I) chains. In contrast, MOFs with highly symmetric, robust haloplumbate chains only exhibit narrow UV-blue photoemission. The designed MOF-based intrinsic white-light photoemitters have a number of advantages over hybrid inorganic-organic perovskites in terms of stability and tunability, including moisture resistance, facile functionalization of photoactive moieties onto the organic linkers, introduction of luminescent guests.