Respiration Drives Dynamic Metal–Organic Framework for Smart Photoresponse to Volatile Toxic Vapors and Their Photodynamic Sterilization

Abstract Using aggregation‐induced emission luminous (AIEgens) containing dynamic molecular rotor structures as linkers to construct flexible smart luminescent metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) has become a transformative approach to constructing artificial intelligence color‐changing materials. Herein, 4′,4″,4′″,4″″‐(ethene‐1,1,2,2‐tetrayl)tetrabiphenyl‐4‐carboxylic acid (H 4 TPPE) is selected as a linker, and octahedral Zr 6 O 4 (OH) 8 (H 2 O) 4 cluster are used as secondary building unit (SBU) to construct the first smart luminescent MOF (Zr‐TPE‐MOF) that can be driven by CH 2 Cl 2 or CH 3 COOH vapor for respiration. It is worth noting that Zr‐TPE‐MOF can absorb trace amounts of CH 2 Cl 2 or CH 3 COOH vapor into the pores through respiration and shows a blue shift of the emission wavelength up to 479 nm and an increase of emission intensity by nearly three times. In addition, the thermochromic behavior of Zr‐TPE‐MOF is not obvious in the temperature range of 80–350 K, but it has obvious thermofluorochromics behavior in the temperature range of 350–470 K. Zr‐TPE‐MOF showed highly sensitive and visualized smart photoresponse to the highly toxic Cr 2 O 7 2− , with a detection limit as low as 7.49 µ m . Benefiting from the porous framework structure and organic–inorganic hybrid characteristics of Zr‐TPE‐MOF, it has excellent ROS generation ability and has excellent application prospects in photodynamic sterilization and rapid degradation of colored dyes.