Coordination polymers for energy transfer: Preparations, properties, sensing applications, and perspectives

• Artificial light-harvesting antenna materials are practically useful for the design of sensors, light-emitting diodes, and solar cells. The long-range ordered organization of energy donors and acceptors on the nano- to micrometer scale is crucial for efficient Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET).
• The field of porous coordination polymers (PCPs, also known as metal-organic frameworks, MOFs) is rapidly growing owing to various applications including catalysis, gas storage, separations, drug delivery, magnetism, fluorescence, non-linear optics, photonics, and so on. Besides these applications, MOFs have emerged as a new class of materials for light harvesting.
• Owing to the well-defined crystal structures and controllable chromophore distance via crystal engineering, coordination polymer materials provided a unique opportunity to study energy transfer.
• In this review, different synthetic and post-treatment approaches to light-harvesting coordination polymer bulk materials, nanoparticles and thin film were reviewed. Optical properties, sensing applications, challenges and perspectives in this area were also discussed.
• This review will be of interest to synthetic and materials chemists attempting to design light-harvesting materials and luminescent MOFs, and researchers who are using MOF as a platform for applications such as chemical and biological sensing, medical imaging, and electro-optical devices.

This review highlights the recent progress of bulk and nanoscale coordination polymer (CP) materials for energy transfer. Artificial light-harvesting materials with efficient energy transfer are practically useful for a variety of applications including photovoltaic, white emitting devices, and sensors. In the past decades CP (aka Metal-organic framework, MOF) has experienced rapid development due to a multitude of applications, including catalyst, gas storage and separations, non-linear optics, luminescence, and so on. Recent research has shown that CP is a very promising light-harvesting platform because the energy transfers can occur between different ligands, from ligand to metal centers, or from MOF skeleton to guest species. This review comprehensively surveyed synthetic approaches to light-harvesting CPs, and post functionalization. Sensing applications and achievements in energy-transfer CP nanoparticles and thin films were also discussed.

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