Metal-Organic Frameworks-Based Devices

Dear Colleagues,

Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) are crystalline coordination networks composed of metal ions or clusters and various organic linkers. They are also made by linking inorganic and organic building units through coordination bonds. The organic units are represented by carboxylates and other organic anions, such as phosphonate, sulfonate, and heterocyclic compounds. MOFs are of interest to researchers in academia and industry alike because of their numerous advantages and attractive characteristics: (1) the crystalline nature of MOFs gives them well-defined structures, which are of great importance for understanding the underlying relationships between structural features of MOFs and their performance. (2) MOF structures not only combine the respective beneficial features of organic and inorganic components, but also have exceptional properties, going beyond those of simple mixtures of components. (3) The high surface area and porosity of MOFs ensure abundant functional sites, thus favoring the adsorption and enrichment of substrate molecules. (4) The uniform pore size and shape in MOFs allow for the accessibility of reaction substrates and products with specific sizes and shapes. (5) At an atomic/molecular level, the tunable pore wall environment facilitates the effective recognition and transportation of reaction substrates and products, as well as the tuning of interactions between substrates and active sites. (6) MOFs are compatible with various kinds of materials (e.g., metal nanoparticles, biomolecules, and polymers). (7) Due to the coexistence and homogeneous dispersion of metal ions and organic linkers in the highly porous structure of MOFs, they can be excellent precursors/templates for various porous materials.

Due to their impressive and promising characteristics and perspectives for further improvement, MOFs have numerous applications in various fields, such as gas separation and storage, vapor adsorption, catalysis, chemical sensing, biomedical applications, and ionic conductors. However, there still exist various important aspects of the commercial applications of MOFs to be addressed; for example, their effective and low-cost processing and formulation can broaden the research of MOFs from purely fundamental to more practical characteristics to obtain deeper insights into the MOF operational range, etc.

Therefore, various detailed aspects of the design, development, and large-scale production of MOF-based devices are considered to be very important, and issues of perspective will be addressed in the current Special Issue, both from the experimental and theoretical/computational points of view.

Dr. Aleksey E. Kuznetsov
Guest Editor

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• metal–organic frameworks
• building units
• applications
• MOF design
• MOF-based devices