Flexible metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) receive much attention owing to their attractive properties that originate from their flexibility and dynamic behavior, and show great potential applications in many fields. Here, recent progress in the discovery, understanding, and property investigations of flexible MOFs are reviewed, and the examples of their potential applications in storage and separation, sensing, and guest capture and release are presented to highlight the developing trends in flexible MOFs.

The separation and purification of light hydrocarbons (LHs) mixtures is one of the most significantly important but energy demanding processes in the petrochemical industry. As an alternative technology to energy intensive traditional separation methods, such as distillation, absorption, extraction, etc., adsorptive separation using selective solid adsorbents could potentially not only lower energy cost but also offer higher efficiency. The need to develop solid materials for the efficiently selective adsorption of LHs molecules, under mild conditions, is therefore of paramount importance and urgency. Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs), emerging as a relatively new class of porous organic–inorganic hybrid materials, have shown promise for addressing this challenging task due to their unparalleled features. Herein, recent advances of using MOFs as separating agents for the separation and purification of LHs, including the purification of CH4, and the separations of alkynes/alkenes, alkanes/alkenes, C5–C6–C7 normal/isoalkanes, and C8 alkylaromatics, are summarized. The relationships among the structural and compositional features of the newly synthesized MOF materials and their separation properties and mechanisms are highlighted. Finally, the existing challenges and possible research directions related to the further exploration of porous MOFs in this very active field are also discussed.

The relationship between morphology and function of ZnO is demonstrated by investigating its polar planes, oxygen vacancies, and catalytic activity for N-formylation. ZnO with various morphologies is controllably synthesized via simple hydrothermal reactions. Scanning electron microcopy images exhibit a variety of the as-prepared hexagonal zinc oxides: rods, disks, rings, and screw caps as a new member of ZnO morphology family. Each of the morphologies is remarkably different from the others in the proportion of the (0001) and (0001 j ) polar planes in the outside surfaces of ZnO crystals. The analysis of photoluminescence spectra shows that there exist more oxygen vacancies in the samples with large polar planes. The synthesized samples are used as a catalyst for the N-formylation of aniline and show a morphology-dependent activity: ZnO with large polar planes is more catalytically active for the N-formylation reaction. This is attributed to the fact that the polar planes generate easily oxygen vacancies, which are considered as the favored sites for catalyzing the N-formylation reaction. The results suggest a positive relationship among polar planes, oxygen vacancies, and catalytic activity for N-formylation.