The unique opportunities of mechanosynthesis in green and scalable fabrication of metal–organic frameworks

Abstract

Due to the fascinating molecular structure of MOFs and their widespread practical use in various industrial applications, great attention has focused on the development of commercialization techniques for up-scaled production of these advanced porous materials. Despite the impressive progress in MOF synthesis via solvothermal methods, the large-scale production of these materials has been limited due to the non-green, non-economic, and complex synthesis routes. Applying the mechanical force to perform a solid-state reaction is a greener multipurpose alternative to conventional synthetic methods, leading to fast, scalable, energy-efficient, and environmentally-friendly processes necessary for developing MOF industrialization processes. General mechanosynthesis methods such as neat grinding, LAG, or ILAG have been used as effective and facile routes to fabricate MOF assemblies. These solid-state reactions provide more possibility to control the topology and dimensionality of MOF materials. However, despite the existence of diverse reviews in the field of mechanosynthesis, a significant gap was observed in a detailed and classified study on mechanosynthesis processes to fabricate different MOF groups such as IRMOFs, ZIFs, MILs, UiOs, Bio-MOFs, etc. Therefore, preparing a review that includes nearly almost all the relevant research in this field was highly expected. This review has provided a detailed study of various advances in MOF mechanosynthesis from the early emergence of this synthesis method highlighting the synthesis challenges and the advantages of mechanochemical methods. A brief review of underlying mechanisms, the characterization methods, and the practical applications of the mechanosynthesized-MOFs is also provided. We believe that based on the valuable information that has been collected through this review, it could be of great interest to a broad range of readers including chemists, and materials scientists.