Tailoring Covalent Organic Frameworks To Capture Water Contaminants

Covalent organic frameworks (COFs) are attractive materials receiving increasing interest in the literature due to their crystallinity, large surface area, and pore uniformity. Their properties can be tailored towards specific applications by judicious design of COF building blocks, giving access to tailor-made pore sizes and surfaces. In this Concept article, developments in the field of COFs that have allowed these materials to be explored for contaminant adsorption are discussed. Strategies to obtain water-stable materials with highly ordered structures and large surface areas are reviewed. Post-synthetic modification approaches, by which pore surfaces can be tuned to target specific contaminants, are described. Recent advances in COF formulations, crucial for future implementation in adsorption devices, are highlighted. At the end, future challenges which need to be addressed to allow for the deployment of COFs for the capture of water contaminants will be discussed.