Spectroscopic Evidence of Energy Transfer in BODIPY-Incorporated Nano-Porphyrinic Metal-Organic Frameworks

Abstract

Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) represent a class of solid-state hybrid compounds consisting of multitopic organic struts and metal-based nodes that are interconnected by coordination bonds, and they are ideal for light harvesting due to their highly ordered structure. These structures can be constructed with chromophore organic ligands structures for the purpose of efficient light harvesting. Here, we prepared porphyrin-based nano-scaled MOFs (nPCN-222) with BODIPY and I2BODIPY photosensitizers by incorporating BODIPY/I2BODIPY into nPCN-222 (nPCN-BDP/nPCN-I2BDP) and demonstrated resonance energy transfer from the donor (BODIPY/I2BODIPY) to the acceptor (nPCN-222) resulting in greatly enhanced fluorescence of nPCN-222, as visually manifested by time-resolved and space-resolved fluorescence imaging of the nano-scaled MOFs.