Two luminescent dye@MOFs systems as dual-emitting platforms for efficient pesticides detection

Pesticides, which can accumulate in soil, water, animals and plants, are essential to world agriculture. Developing a method that can efficiently and quickly detect toxic pesticides is of importance but still a challenge. Here, two luminescent dye@MOFs systems, Rho B@1 and Rho 6G@1, were successfully fabricated based on [Cd₂(tib)(btb)(H₂O)₂]∙NO₃∙2DMF (1). This work is the first use of two fluorescent sensors as dual-emitting platforms for detecting pesticides. As a result, the fluorescence intensity ratios between the two main emissions can be tuned using the concentrations of the dye solutions, and the emissions are at 370 nm/606 nm and 370 nm/590 nm for Rho B@1 and Rho 6G@1, respectively. The intensities of the two main emissions of Rho B@1 and Rho 6G@1 are also influenced by the chemical structures of pesticides with electron-withdrawing groups. It is important that high sensitivity and selectivity for sensing pesticides must have good recyclability. Rho B@1 and Rho 6G@1 can still remain stable regarding the detection of nitenpyram even after 5 cycles, with LODs of 0.48 nM for Rho B@1 and 3 nM for Rho 6G@1, which indicate that these two luminescent dye@MOFs systems are excellent fluorescence probe candidates for the selective detection of pesticides.