Direct Catalytic Conversion of CO2 to Cyclic Organic Carbonates under Mild Reaction Conditions by Metal-Organic Frameworks

The reduction of the representative greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide (CO2), is significantly an important theme for the current research in the modern chemical world. For the last two decades, the development of new metal-organic framework (MOF) systems with highly selective capture of CO2, in the presence of other competing gaseous molecules, has flourished to capture or separate CO2 for environmental protection. Nonetheless, the ultimate resolution to lessen the atmospheric CO2 concentration may be in the chemical or electrochemical conversion of CO2 to other compounds. In this context, the catalytic cycloaddition reaction of CO2 into organic epoxides to produce cyclic carbonates is a more attractive method. MOFs are being proven as efficient heterogeneous catalytic systems for this important reaction. In this review, we collected very recent progress in MOF-based catalytic systems, fully operable under very mild reaction conditions (room temperature and 1 atm CO2).