Construction of Function-Oriented Core-Shell Nanostructures in Hydrogen-Bonded Organic Frameworks for Near-Infrared-Responsive Bacterial Inhibition

Exploration of effective ways to integrate various functional species into hydrogen-bonded organic frameworks (HOFs) is critically important for their applications but highly challenging. In this study, according to the bottle-around-ship strategy, core-shell heterostructure of upconversion nanoparticles (UCNPs) and HOFs was fabricated for the first time via a ligand-grafting stepwise method. The UCNPs core can effectively upconvert near-infrared (NIR) irradiation (980 nm) into visible light (540 nm and 653 nm), which further excites the perylenediimide-based HOF shell through resonance energy transfer. In this way, the nanocomposite inherits the high porosity, excellent photothermal and photodynamic efficiency, NIR photoresponse from two parent materials, achieving intriguing NIR-responsive bacterial inhibition toward Escherichia coli. This study may shed light on the design of functional HOF-based composite materials, not only enriching the HOF library but also broadening the horizon of their potential applications.

Automated summary

The bottle-around-ship strategy was used to fabricate a core-shell heterostructure of UCNPs and HOFs, achieving intriguing NIR-responsive bacterial inhibition toward Escherichia coli.