Sarin, a highly toxic class of organophosphorus compounds, rapidly inactivates acetylcholinesterase and can be fatal even at milligram-level doses. This makes rapid, on-site, and highly sensitive atmospheric fluorescence detection crucial for safeguarding public safety.

To address practical challenges faced by traditional MOF materials—including difficult active site embedding and poor formability arising from powder aggregation—researchers from the Xinjiang Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry (XTIPC), Chinese Academy of Sciences, proposed a universal sustainable strategy. They constructed nano-sized, dual-ligand functionalized, self-assembling film-forming EuMOFs with tunable optical properties via a carboxylated cellulose nanofibril (CNF)-induced in-situ one-step approach. Based on the unique dual-ligand structure, the obtained EuMOF featured a tunable antenna effect and laid a good foundation for fluorescence sensing materials. Benefiting from the superior self-assembly properties of CNFs and the tunable antenna effect of EuMOF@CNF, flexible sensing films were constructed, showing excellent mechanical properties (72 MPa for stress and 3.8% for strain) and tunable luminescence properties and achieving instant (1 s) and sensitive fluorescence sensing of sarin analogue vapor with a significantly low limit of detection (LOD, 2.8 ppb) and robust selectivity against a wide range of common interferents (>14 types), especially independent of common acids. We believe that this pioneering design of EuMOF with tunable antenna effects would positively advance the development of high-performance MOF-based fluorescent materials and devices. Entitled “One-step Coordinating POPD in H₃BTB-sensitized EuMOF-enabled Tunable Antenna Effect for Fluorescence Turn-on Sensing of Sarin Analog Vapor”, this work was published in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces.

This work on antenna-effecttunable EuMOF nanoparticles synthesis is expected to pave the way for controllable functional nanostructure fabrication and applications in high-performance chemical sensors.

Figure: In-situ one-step synthesis strategy and antenna effect modulation strategy (lmage by XTIPC)