Our journey of developing dual-emitting metal-organic framework-based fluorescent sensors

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) provide broad prospects for the development of various types of luminescence sensors due to their versatile structures and tunable luminescence characteristics. In order to overcome the main drawbacks of single-emission luminescence sensors, such as being susceptible to the fluctuation of probe concentration and interference from external conditions, the ratiometric luminescent sensors utilizing the ratio between the intensity of two emssions within the same luminescent material, have been widely developed in recent years. We are committed to designing and developing luminescent ratiometric MOF-based sensors toward a wide range of targeted functional species. In this mini-review article, after the general description of ratiometric luminescent sensors, we have summarized our recent advances in the strategies for synthesizing dual-emitting MOFs and their applications for ratiometric sensing of temperature, pH, biomarkers and water, as well as the related sensing mechanisms.