Recent strategies to improve the photoactivity of metal-organic frameworks

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are micro/mesoporous crystalline materials with high surface area, tunability, and compositional diversity and have been widely used in diverse applications, including catalysis. The rigid framework built from organic and inorganic functional structures can offer the merits of both, providing a platform to convert solar energy into usable or storable energy. Various approaches such as bandgap engineering, modulating the charge separation and increasing the intrinsic activity have been developed to improve the photocatalytic performance. This frontier article summarizes the current state-of-the-art in the use of MOFs as photocatalysts, emphasizing the recent strategies to optimize their visible-light-driven catalytic activities. Hopefully, this review could foreshadow new guidelines for explaining the current interest in exploiting novel MOF-based photocatalysts.