Scalable and Low-Energy Synthesis of Metal-Organic Frameworks by a Seed-Mediated Approach

The synthesis of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) by low energy input has been a long-term target for practical applications yet remains a great challenge. Herein, we developed a low-energy MOF growth strategy at a temperature down to 50 °C by simply introducing seeds into the reaction system. The MOFs are continuously grown on the surface of the seeds at a growth rate dozens of times higher than that of conventional solvothermal synthesis at low temperature, while the resulting MOFs possess high crystallinity, porosity, and stability similar to solvothermal seeds. Remarkably, the obtained MOFs feature high-density structural defects with Lewis acidity, thereby displaying more than one order of magnitude higher activity than the MOFs obtained by the conventional solvothermal method in the iodination reaction of substituted arenes. This low-energy synthetic approach is readily scaled up, which would be a significant step forward in the dream of the MOF industry.