Design and Synthesis of Metal-Organic Frameworks for Selective Sensing Applications

Abstract

The Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOFs), porous crystalline solids composed of metal nodes connected by organic linkers has emerged as a new class of sensory material in recent time. Especially fluorescent MOFs as sensory material offer several advantages like molecular sieving effect, pre-concentration of analytes, optical band gap tuning with respect to target analyte and guest accessible pendant groups allow selective interaction. The present thesis describes design and synthesis of fluorescent MOFs for selective sensing of nitro explosives and biologically important Hydrogen Sulphide (H2S) gas. The designed strategy to synthesize fluorescent MOF to achieve selective TNP detection in organic and aqueous phase and in presence of competing nitro analytes has been discussed. The selective and sensitive 2,4,6-trinitrophenol (TNP) detection using fluorescent MOF based probe has been explored for the first time. The selective detection was further extended to biological H2S detection. The reaction based approach has been utilized to get selective H2S detection in presence of competing biomolecules using MOF based turn-on probe. The cell viability and live cell imaging studies demonstrates the potential for real time application.