Fast synthesis of bimetallic metal-organic frameworks based on dielectric barrier discharge for analytical atomic spectrometry and ratiometric fluorescent sensing

Dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) has recently been validated by us as a fast, facile and green strategy for the preparation of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), while the so-prepared MOFs still await further application as functional materials. Moreover, bimetallic MOFs have been reported to be advantageous over their single-metal counterparts for diverse applications, which were for the first time synthesized based on DBD in this work, with UiO-66(Zr/Ce) and Tb1.7Eu0.3(BDC)(3)(H2O)(4) obtained within 20 min, much shorter than that for the conventional methods. The UiO-66(Zr/Ce) showed highly selective absorption of Se(IV), and the determination and speciation analysis of Se by atomic spectrometry were accomplished with improved sensitivity and good selectivity if using UiO-66(Zr/Ce) as the absorbent for Se(IV) preconcentration prior to the measurement. The Tb1.7Eu0.3(BDC)(3)(H2O)(4) acted as the probe for ratiometric fluorescent sensing of dipicolinic acid (DPA), with the performance similar to other Tb-Eu MOFs synthesized by the conventional methods. This work demonstrated that bimetallic MOFs could be efficiently synthesized by the DBD-based strategy and further applied to spectrometric analysis, with similar performance to or even expanded application scope of the previously reported.