Rotation Restricted Emission and Antenna Effect in Single Metal–Organic Frameworks

Aggregation induced-emission (AIE) and antenna effects are important luminescence behaviors. Thus, investigating their emission mechanisms and revealing their behaviors have become critical but challenging. Here we design and prepare metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) with an AIE ligand (i.e., tetrakis(4-carboxyphenyl)pyrazine (L1)) and Ln3+ ions (including Eu3+, Tb3+, and Gd3+). The emission from L1 is gradually enhanced during the formation of the MOFs because coordination restricts the intramolecular rotation. Thus, the emission is called as coordination-induced emission (CIE) with the same restriction of intramolecular rotation mechanism as AIE. Meanwhile, benzene rings twist to adapt to the MOFs’ rigid…

• NN
  National Natural Science Foundation of China

  Awards: 21435001, 21874074, 21675090
• CS
  China Scholarship Council

  Award: 20183101