Guest-Triggered Aggregation-Induced Emission in Silver Chalcogenolate Cluster Metal-Organic Frameworks.

Utilizing aggregation-induced emission luminogens (AIEgens) as ligands has proven to be an effective strategy for constructing metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) with intense luminescent properties. However, highly luminescent AIEgen-based MOFs with adjustable emission properties are rarely achieved because of the rigid conformation of AIEgens in the crystalline state. Here, a dual-node 3D silver chalcogenolate cluster MOF () is designed and synthesized, where the AIE ligand shows relatively flexible and rotatable conformations. The conformations of AIE ligands in are switchable by the absorption/desorption of guest molecules. As a result, exhibited not only intense but also guest molecule switched luminescent properties. More importantly, the switching rate is tunable by using different guest molecules. provides a unique visualized prototype to understand the mechanism of guest-triggered aggregation-induced emission in MOFs.