A metal-organic framework with a 9-phenylcarbazole moiety as a fluorescent tag for picric acid explosive detection: collaboration of electron transfer, hydrogen bonding and size matching

We report here an electron-rich luminescent metal-organic framework (MOF), Zn-PDA, displaying high selectivity in the detection of PA (picric acid) explosive as a fluorescent sensor, which can serve as the first case of MOFs for detecting PA through synergistic effects including electron transfer, hydrogen-bonding and size matching.