Reticular sensing materials with aggregation-induced emission characteristics

Reticular chemistry includes metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) and covalent organic frameworks (COFs), which are porous crystalline materials constructed by well-defined molecular building blocks. Fluorescent MOFs/COFs have shown great power in analytical chemistry, such as chemical sensing, biosensing, electrochemiluminescence, environmental monitoring, etc. Sensors with aggregation-induced emission (AIE) properties are the perfect match with reticular materials: they possess very weak emission in dilute solution while strong luminescence in the reticular solid-state materials. In this article, we will review the sensing applications of reticular materials with AIE characteristics and provide insightful perspectives for future works. [Display omitted] •The progress of AIE MOFs/COFs in sensing applications is systematically summarized.•The design principle, limitation, potential strategies, and insightful future prospect are discussed in the perspective part.