The invention provides a powerful design strategy towards next-generation, multiplexed, lifetime-encoded tags via engineering intermetallic energy transfer in heterometallic metal-organic frameworks based on nonanuclear metal clusters. Precise manipulation of the luminescence decay dynamics over a wide microsecond regime can be achieved owing to the control over metal ordering in these systems. As an example of the invention, a novel, dynamic double encoding method that uses the braille alphabet was achieved by incorporating the materials into photocurable inks patterned on glass and interrogated via digital high-speed imaging. The facile synthesis and interrogation of these heterometallic metal-organic frameworks having complex and tunable optical properties enables next-generation, multiplexed optical tags.