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

Abstract

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 (<b>1</b>) is designed and synthesized, where the AIE ligand shows relatively flexible and rotatable conformations. The conformations of AIE ligands in <b>1</b> are switchable by the absorption/desorption of guest molecules. As a result, <b>1</b> exhibited not only intense but also guest molecule switched luminescent properties. More importantly, the switching rate is tunable by using different guest molecules. <b>1</b> provides a unique visualized prototype to understand the mechanism of guest-triggered aggregation-induced emission in MOFs.