A phthalimide-functionalized UiO-66 metal-organic framework for the fluorogenic detection of hydrazine in live cells.

Here, we demonstrated the synthesis, characterization and application of a phthalimide-functionalized UiO-66 metal-organic framework, which showed an intrinsic detection capability for hydrazine. The MOF material (1) was solvothermally prepared by the reaction between ZrCl and 2-(1,3-dioxoisoindolin-2-yl)benzene-1,4-dioic acid (HL) ligand in DMF solvent in the presence of benzoic acid for 48 h at 120 °C. The guest molecule free material (1') was used as a turn-on fluorescent sensor for the selective detection of hydrazine under biological conditions.