Nanoengineering of Metal-Organic Frameworks and Their Derived Materials for Energy and Environmental Applications

Dear Colleagues,

In the past decade, the energy, environmental, sensing, and biomedical applications of metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) have attracted significant attention owing to their high surface area, large pore volume, structural flexibility, and controllable composition and porosity. They are defined as crystalline porous materials formed through coordination bonding between metal centres and organic linkers.

The properties of MOFs and their derived materials depend on various factors, including composition (choice of ligand and metal centre), size, shape, and porosity. These factors can be controlled by adjusting the synthetic parameters, including solvent choice and amount, metal to ligand ratio, time, temperature, and pH.  Metal–organic frameworks can assume a zero-, one-, two-, and three-dimensional morphology. Two-dimensional MOF nanostructures are desirable because they can provide more exposed active sites, increased accessibility to the active sites, and the faster transport of ions/electrons, whereas hierarchical three-dimensional MOF nanostructures composed of one- or two-dimensional subunits are attractive due to the combined advantages of the multidimensional architectures.

MOFs exhibit a tuneable pore size, which can bridge the gap between zeolites and mesoporous silica. MOFs are known for their microporous nature (pore size < 2 nm), which may be beneficial for specific applications, such as gas capture and separation and gas storage applications. However, in other applications, such as energy storage and conversion, catalysis, adsorption, and drug delivery, the micropores are often disadvantageous for allowing the effective transport and diffusion of ions/molecules, for anchoring molecular catalysts, or for impregnating metal catalyst precursors or certain drug molecules, thus limiting their applications. Therefore, recent efforts have focused on expanding the pore size of MOFs into the mesoporous range (pore size between 2 to 50 nm), which may enable the MOF materials to host larger-sized molecules and to promote better transport and diffusion of ions or molecules.

Owing to the inorganic and organic constituents in MOFs, they can serve as attractive precursors for the fabrication of nanoporous carbons as well as nanoporous inorganic materials, including nanoporous oxides, hydroxides, sulphides, phosphides, phosphates, selenides, and nitrides. This is particularly important in applications where high electrical conductivity is essential, such as energy storage and conversion devices. The MOF-derived materials typically retain the morphology and porosity of the parent MOFs, further highlighting the advantages of using MOFs as templates/precursors for creating nanoporous materials. Apart from the thermal conversion of MOFs, increasing efforts have been made in recent years to develop conductive MOFs by using redox-active linkers or postsynthetic modifications.

This Special Issue aims to present the recent progress in the development of novel MOFs (including conductive MOFs); MOF-derived materials with controllable compositions (monometallic and multimetallic MOFs), structures (0D to 3D MOFs), and porosity (microporous, mesoporous, and hierarchical porous MOFs); and their hybrids with other materials (e.g., carbon and inorganic materials) for a diverse range of applications, including energy storage and conversion, sensing, biomedical applications, adsorption, gas capture and storage, gas separation, etc. Both review papers (including mini-reviews) and research articles are welcome.

Dr. Yusuf Valentino Kaneti
Dr. Chaohai Wang
Dr. Ni Luh Wulan Septiani
Guest Editors

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• nanoporous materials
• metal–organic frameworks
• energy storage and conversion
• sensors
• environmental applications
• two-dimensional
• conductive MOFs
• hierarchical porous MOFs
• adsorption
• gas capture and storage