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Updated: Jan 21, 2026

Nanostructured Ag-zeolite Composites as Luminescence-based Humidity Sensors
Published on: November 15, 2016
Highly luminescent sensing for nitrofurans and tetracyclines in water based on zeolitic imidazolate framework-8
Yan-Qiu Zhang1, Xiao-Han Wu2, Shun Mao3
1State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Resource Reuse, College of Environmental Science & Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai, 200092, PR China.
Abstract:
Antibiotics are one of the emerging contaminants in water, which have a great impact on ecosystems and human health. It has been challenging to simultaneously realize low-cost, rapid, highly sensitive and selective detection of antibiotics with conventional methods. Here, we report luminescent chemosensors for detecting antibiotics in water, based on metal-organic framework (MOF), i.e., zeolitic imidazolate framework-8 (ZIF-8), loaded with rhodamine B (RhB) and fluorescein disodium salt (FSS) dyes. Compared with ZIF-8, the fluorescence signals of RhB@ZIF-8 and FSS@ZIF-8 were significantly improved and presented ultrahigh sensitivity to nitrofurans (NFAs) and tetracyclines (TCs) with fluorescence quenching and fluorescence enhancement in water, respectively. The unique structures and properties of RhB@ZIF-8 and FSS@ZIF-8 lead to outstanding sensitivities in antibiotic detection. For instance, the RhB@ZIF-8 sensor shows the lower limit of detection (LOD) of 0.26 μM to nitrofurantoin (NFT), 0.47 μM to nitrofurazone (NFZ), 0.11 μM to tetracycline (TC), and 0.14 μM to oxytetracycline (OTC); while the FSS@ZIF-8 sensor shows the LOD of 0.31 μM to NFT, 0.35 μM to NFZ, 0.17 μM to TC, and 0.16 μM to OTC. In addition, NFT and TC were also successfully detected by FSS@ZIF-8 in water from real water environment. The results indicate that dye@MOF-based luminescent composites are favorable for antibiotic detection, presenting great potentials in water quality monitoring.
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