Strategy to Efficient Photodynamic Therapy for Antibacterium: Donor-Acceptor Structure in Hydrogen-Bonded Organic Framework.

While the construction of a donor-acceptor (D-A) structure have gained great attention across various scientific disciplines, such structures have seldomly been reported within the field of hydrogen-bonded organic frameworks (HOFs). Herein, a donor-acceptor (D-A) based HOF was synthesized, where the adjacent D-A pairs were connected by hydrogen bonds instead of the conventionally employed covalent bonds. This structural feature imparts material with a reduced energy gap between excited state and triplet state, thereby facilitating the intersystem crossing and boosting the generation rate of single oxygen (quantum yield = 0.98). Consequently, the resulting material showed high performance for antimicrobial photodynamic therapy. The impact of D-A moiety was evident when comparing this finding to a parallel study conducted on an isoreticular HOF without a D-A structure. The study presented here provides in-depth insights into the photophysical properties of D-A pair in a hydrogen-bonded network, opening a new avenue to design of innovative materials for efficient photodynamic therapy. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.