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

Two new luminescent metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), [Zn(L)(0.5)(1,10-phen)(H2O)]center dot 2H(2)O (1) and [Cd(L)(0.5)(1,10-phen)(H2O)]center dot 2H(2)O (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.