Acta Phys. -Chim. Sin. ›› 2026, Vol. 42 ›› Issue (7): 100225.doi: 10.1016/j.actphy.2025.100225

• REVIEW • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Metal-Organic Frameworks (2014–2024): A decade pursuit for top performance

Ri Peng1, Yuxin Xie1, Shuai Yuan2, Ruwei Shen1, Dunru Zhu1,2,*()   

  1. 1 State Key Laboratory of Materials-Oriented Chemical Engineering, College of Chemical Engineering, Nanjing Tech University, Nanjing 211816, Jiangsu Province, China
    2 State Key Laboratory of Coordination Chemistry, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210023, Jiangsu Province, China
  • Received:2025-09-22 Revised:2025-11-23 Accepted:2025-11-26 Published:2026-05-22
  • Contact: Email: zhudr@njtech.edu.cn (Dunru Zhu)

Abstract:

The Nobel prize in chemistry 2025 was awarded to S. Kitagawa, R. Robson and O. M. Yaghi for the development of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). As a star material of the 21st century, MOFs owning big specific surface areas, nanoscale porosities coupled with diverse topological structures, have been successfully applied in many fields. No longer limited to the traditional gas adsorption, separation and catalysis, MOFs, representing the state-of-the-art porous materials, have also showcased promising applications in some emerging realms, such as atmospheric water harvesting, pathogen detection, and uranium extraction from seawater. Yaghi presented a vital review on the optimal properties of MOFs before 2013 in Science; however, some remarkable breakthroughs in MOF properties have been made since then. The reticular chemistry-guided assembly of inorganic cations (nodes) with organic ligands (linkers) may lead to mixed-component MOFs with the synergistic combinations of the excellent performance from mono-component MOFs. The introduction of artificial intelligence technology into MOF fields can provide more opportunities for scientists to rapidly design and manufacture novel MOFs with tailored properties. In addition, novel porous isoreticular non-MOFs synthesized based on an inverse MOFs design strategy (negatively charged nodes and positively charged linkers) may open up a new research hotspot for MOF materials.

Key words: Metal-organic framework, Top-performance, Optimal property, Emerging application