Construction of core–shell MOF@COF hybrid materials as highly efficient light-responsive oxidase-like nanozymes for colorimetric detection of glutathione

In this work, a novel and light-responsive nanozyme, with enzyme-like characteristics, was synthesized based on core–shell MOF@COF hybrid materials. The donor–acceptor type COF (as shell) synthesized by 1,3,6,8-tetrakis(4-aminophenyl)pyrene (Py, donor) and thieno[3,2-b]thiophene-2,5-dicarbaldehyde (Tt, acceptor) was wrapped on the NH2-Cu-MOF (robust catalyst, as core) through a sequential growth strategy. Surprisingly, with visible-light irradiation, the core–shell Cu-MOF@Py-Tt hybrid materials exhibited extremely high oxidase-like enzymatic catalytic activity attributing to the high separation efficiency of photogenerated carriers in core–shell hybrid materials and the shell with the characteristics of large π-conjugated and D-A electronic structure. With the light-control catalytic activity, Cu-MOF@Py-Tt can form the O2•- that can catalyze the TMB to blue color. Consequently, a light-control, sensitive and rapid colorimetric method for determination of glutathione (GSH) was designed based on light-responsive oxidase mimic of core–shell Cu-MOF@Py-Tt with the linear range of 0.2–70 μM and limit of detection of 0.17 μM. The proposed method demonstrated the future potential of core–shell MOF@COF hybrid materials to obtain excellent nanozyme activity.