Sensitive and Selective Detection of Bisphenol Compounds in a Fluorescent Metal-Organic Framework

Bisphenol compounds (BPs), as a group of endocrine disrupted compounds, have been posing serious risk on ecological environment and human health. The sensing of BPs is quite significant, but still in challenge. Here, we report, for the first time, a metal-organic framework (MOF) directly and alone, enables the selective and sensitive detection of BPs on its unique fluorescent change. This MOF is based on Ga(III) ion, and interestingly represents specific fluorescent behavior of “turn on” and “turn off”. It exhibits not only good sensing capability with the detection limits as low as 26.36 nM (6.02 μg/L) for the typical BPs (bisphenol A), but also excellent selectivity toward the BPs on the synchronous fluorescent changes of “turn on” at 320 nm and “turn off” at 382 nm. Where, this phenomenon is caused by π-π stacking and hydrogen bonding interactions between adsorbed bisphenol molecules and the MOF host, demonstrated by molecular simulations. More importantly, the proposed sensing method based on this MOF is applicable in the detection of BPs in drinking water, showing excellent performance.