Multivariate Metal-Organic Frameworks for Programming Functions

Multivariate metal-organic frameworks (MTV-MOFs) provide a handle over programming MOF's physicochemical properties for use in functional applications. In this review, the state-of-art design features of MTV-MOFs are summarized, including multivariate functionalities, mixed metals, and post-synthetic modification, and highlight their resulting fine-tuned performance in practical applications, such as gas storage, gas separation, water harvesting, luminescence sensing, heterogeneous catalysis, and drug delivery. Furthermore, a vision is provided for future research avenues, in which MTV-MOFs enable the incorporation of a variety of functionalities, metals, linkers, secondary building units (SBUs), and pore metrics along a specific crystallographic direction with respect to the ordered backbone. Future directions focus on mechanistic and kinetics investigations into the formation of MTV-MOFs in addition to high-throughput screening with the aim of automation and artificial intelligence. In this review, the state-of-art of designing multivariate MOFs (MTV-MOFs) is summarized, by de novo synthesis or post-synthetic modification, for functional applications such as gas storage, adsorptive separation, water harvesting, molecular sensing, heterogeneous catalysis, and drug delivery. The study highlights why MTV-MOFs are superior materials and outlook the further research directions for developing sequence-dependent materials. image