Mesopore and macropore engineering in metal–organic frameworks for energy environment-related applications

Abstract

Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) have attracted great attention from all over the world during the past two decades due to their high porosity, controllable pore size, and well-defined structures. They not only exert a far-reaching influence in the field of nanomaterials design, but are also highly promising in numerous emerging applications especially for gas adsorption and separation, photo-/electrocatalysis, energy storage, etc. In particular, the mesoporous and macroporous structures in MOFs exhibited faster diffusion, better mass transfer, and more accessible active sites compared to the intrinsic micropores of some early MOFs. The most critical and challenging element which can affect the performances of MOFs is controlling the pore size. This review mainly focusses on the methodology advances of mesopore and macropore engineering in MOFs. Moreover, the structural advantages and pore features of meso-/macroporous MOFs and their corresponding derivatives in various energy environment-related applications including adsorption, catalysis and energy storage are also summarized, as well as their subsisting challenges and our outlook for future development in this field.