Guest-Triggered Aggregation-Induced Emission in Silver Chalcogenolate Cluster Metal-Organic Frameworks

Utilizing aggregation-induced emission luminogens (AIEgens) as ligands has proven to be an effective strategy for constructing metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) with intense luminescent properties. However, highly luminescent AIEgen-based MOFs with adjustable emission properties are rarely achieved because of the rigid conformation of AIEgens in the crystalline state. Here, a dual-node 3D silver chalcogenolate cluster MOF (1) is designed and synthesized, where the AIE ligand shows relatively flexible and rotatable conformations. The conformations of AIE ligands in 1 are switchable by the absorption/desorption of guest molecules. As a result, 1 exhibited not only intense but also guest molecule switched luminescent properties. More importantly, the switching rate is tunable by using different guest molecules. 1 provides a unique visualized prototype to understand the mechanism of guest-triggered aggregation-induced emission in MOFs.