Fabrication of free-standing fluorescent mesoporous silica films for detection of nitrobenzene

We report a facile two-step strategy for grafting lanthanide complexes onto the surface of nanocrystalline cellulose-templated mesoporous silica films to prepare luminescence mesoporous silica films, which retain both chiral nematic order of the cellulose nanocrystals and fluorescence of the lanthanide complexes are successfully co-assembled after removal of the cellulose and grafting lanthanide complexes. The films exhibit well-defined fluorescence combining the assembly lanthanide complexes. The mesoporous channels of fluorescent mesoporous silica films are more accessible to the analytes compared with traditional fluorescent materials. So, our fluorescent mesoporous silica films were used as fluorescent sensor for the detection of nitrobenzene.