Energy Barrier-Engineered Metal-Organic Framework with Full-Spectrum Tunable Multiemissions for Array Discrimination...

Area of Science:

• Materials Science
• Analytical Chemistry
• Nanotechnology

Background:

• Overuse of antibiotics necessitates advanced detection methods.
• Existing multiemissive optical sensors face challenges in constructing universal materials.
• Synchronous analysis of multiple, structurally similar antibiotics remains difficult.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop an efficient and universal strategy for constructing multiemissive materials.
• To create tunable multiemissions from a single lanthanide metal-organic framework (MOF).
• To apply these materials in a sensor array for discriminating multiple antibiotics.

Main Methods:

• Utilized an energy barrier strategy introducing a lanthanide ion into a Eu/Tb-MOF.
• Synthesized a series of isostructural Gd_xTb_yEu_z-NTB MOFs with tunable luminescence.
• Assembled a sensor array using these MOFs for antibiotic analysis.

Main Results:

• Achieved full-spectrum tunable multiemissions from a single MOF under one excitation wavelength.
• Successfully discriminated eight different antibiotics (nitrofurans and tetracyclines) in real water samples.
• Demonstrated high sensitivity for quantitative antibiotic detection with a low limit of detection (0.03 μM).

Conclusions:

• The energy barrier strategy provides a universal approach for constructing tunable multiemissive MOFs.
• The developed MOF-based sensor array offers a promising platform for sensitive and selective antibiotic detection.
• This work guides the development of advanced optical materials for complex analytical challenges.