Two luminescent metal–organic frameworks with multifunctional properties for nitroaromatic compounds sensing and photocatalysis

Abstract

Two new luminescent metal–organic frameworks (MOFs), [Zn(L)_0.5(1,10-phen)(H₂O)]·2H₂O (1) and [Cd(L)_0.5(1,10-phen)(H₂O)]·2H₂O (2), have been successfully synthesized using bis-(3,5-dicarboxyphenyl)terephthalamide(H₄L) as organic linkers and 1,10-phen as auxiliary ligand under solvothermal conditions. The two complexes are isostructural and they both have 1D ladder chain structures. For the two complexes, the participation of the fluorescent ligand H₄L not only gives rise to a strong photoluminescence emission as expected, but more interestingly, that ligand originated characteristic band could be quenched selectively by nitroaniline with a low detection limit. The results show that 1 and 2 can be promising fluorescence sensors for selective detecting and recognizing nitroaromatic compounds via fluorescence quenching mechanism. Meanwhile, the photocatalytic activities were also determined by UV light induced photodegradation of Rhodamine B (RhB) experiments. The obtained results indicate that 1 and 2 can be stable and good UV light driving heterogeneous photocatalyst, which can be used to treat effectively wastewater of organic dyes in the future.