A general design approach toward covalent organic frameworks for highly efficient electrochemiluminescence.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 34354067.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-021-25013-8 and PMC identifier 8342611.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Electrochemiluminescence (ECL) plays a key role in analysis and sensing because of its high sensitivity and low background. Its wide applications are however limited by a lack of highly tunable ECL luminophores. Here we develop a scalable method to design ECL emitters of covalent organic frameworks (COFs) in aqueous medium by simultaneously restricting the donor and acceptor to the COFs' tight electron configurations and constructing high-speed charge transport networks through olefin linkages. This design allows efficient intramolecular charge transfer for strong ECL, and no exogenous poisonous co-reactants are needed. Olefin-linked donor-acceptor conjugated COFs, systematically synthesized by combining non-ECL active monomers with C<sub>2v</sub> or C<sub>3v</sub> symmetry, exhibit strong ECL signals, which can be boosted by increasing the chain length and conjugation of monomers. The present concept demonstrates that the highly efficient COF-based ECL luminophores can be precisely designed, providing a promising direction toward COF-based ECL phosphors.