Recent developments in luminescence MOFs based sensing platform for lead and cadmium detection – An update

The non-essential heavy metal pollution is a pressing global challenge which is greatly impacting human health and biodiversity. Their strong tendency to interfere with bio functioning by mimicking the essential elements disrupts the cellular responses. Therefore, environmental monitoring of non-essential heavy metals is of utmost importance, and the development of an efficient, sensitive, and selective real-time detection platform is vital. Recently, metal organic frameworks (MOFs) have emerged as potential materials due to their intriguing framework architecture, tunable functional properties, and superior sensing capabilities for developing luminescence-based sensing platforms. Luminescent organic metal frameworks outperformed in real-time detection of non-essential heavy metals in terms of their rapid response, high sensitivity, and selectivity. In this review, we document recent developments in MOF-based detection of non-essential heavy metal viz. lead (Pb) and cadmium (Cd). The first section emphasizes the rationale behind the selection of metals, followed by brief discussion on detection techniques and MOFs as sensing materials for these metals. The second section extensively focuses on transition and lanthanides metal-based MOFs as luminescent sensing platform for quantitative monitoring of Pb and Cd with special emphasis on their synthesis and sensing mechanism followed by the conclusions and prospects of luminescent MOFs (LMOFs).