Controllable Synthesis of Metal-Organic Frameworks and Their Hierarchical Assemblies

Abstract

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have been widely employed in gas storage and separation, drug delivery, and catalysis. The design and construction of MOFs and their hierarchical assemblies play a key role in enhancing properties including guest diffusion kinetics, catalytic activity, and selectivity. This Review summarizes the most recent advances in the controlled synthesis of MOFs with tunable sizes and morphologies, discusses the programmed assembly of novel MOFs with hierarchical structures, and highlights the vital roles of composition, morphology, and the hierarchically porous structure in applications, including delivery and catalysis. A short review of programmable assembly of MOF superstructures and composites with hierarchically arranged functionalities is provided. Taken together, this Review is expected to supply synthetic guidance for developing MOFs and their hierarchical assemblies, which shall in turn guide the state-of-the-art design of sophisticated materials with unprecedented tunability for various applications.

Salts Induced Formation of Hierarchical Porous ZIF‐8 and Their Applications for CO2 Sorption and Hydrogen Generation via NaBH4 Hydrolysis

“…These molecules block the formed pore, and thus multisteps are usually required to remove these reagents and get an accessible hierarchical pore structure. [ 25–27 ] The postsynthetic procedure to remove these template molecules is often incomplete step and in some cases result in impurities in the final products. Furthermore, most of these methods are time‐consuming and require environmentally unfriendly reagents.…”

Controlled Shape Evolution of Pure‐MOF 1D Microcrystals towards Efficient Waveguide and Laser Applications

“…Although the shape evolution of MOF crystals can be accomplished via the templated synthesis or size‐confinement effect, [13] these methods usually induce inevitable damages to the crystallinity and surface roughness of MOF microcrystals, leading to unexpected optical defects. Here, we propose a synergistic method of the bottom‐up and top‐down processes to fabricate tpbe‐Cd microcrystals with designable shapes, which evolve from microrods via microtubes to nanowires (Figure 1 e).…”

Recent Advances in the Use of Metal-Organic Frameworks for Dye Adsorption

“…As the regular and directional framework structures of MOFs can be visualized with the help of X-ray diffraction studies, precise designs of MOFs with desired pore sizes and surface functional groups are possible, rendering them useful candidates for the adsorption of gases (Li et al, 2009 ; Fukushima et al, 2010 ) and many other applications (Janiak and Vieth, 2010 ; Furukawa et al, 2013 ; Hu et al, 2014 ; Lin et al, 2014 ). The miniaturization of MOFs into nanosheets (Au et al, 2019 ; Liu et al, 2019 ) and nanoparticles (Feng et al, 2019 ) has also broadened the potential applications of MOFs. Over the past decade, the effectiveness of MOFs for the adsorption of organic dye molecules in liquid systems have been recognized.…”