Bimetallic Lanthanide-Organic Framework Membranes as a Self-Calibrating Luminescent Sensor for Rapidly Detecting Antibiotics in Water

Rapid, facile, and reliable recognition of different antibiotics by self-calibrating luminescent sensors are important for practical requirements. Herein, we design and synthesize a series of Eu1–xTbx-MOF using a flexible ligand H4L (5,5′-(propane-1,3-diylbis(oxy))di-isophthalic acid). With changing reactant time, submicrometer bimetallic SMOF-10–10h with homogeneous morphology was achieved and further fabricated MOF-based membrane combining with polymer materials. A luminescent study indicated that the bimetallic SMOF-10–10h membrane possesses a legible emission peak for Eu3+ and Tb3+ ions, which can act as a self-calibrating luminescent probe for efficiently sensing different antibiotics within a certain concentration range through two-dimensional (2D) readouts based on the emission intensity ratio. Our work first reports an inexpensive and convenience bimetallic MOF-based membrane as a luminescent sensor with self-calibrating to detect various antibiotics, which makes it a potential luminescent sensor for beneficial application.