Metal-Organic Frameworks for Electrocatalysis: Beyond Their Derivatives

Electrocatalysis is at the heart of many significant chemical transformation processes and advanced clean energy technologies. Traditional noble/transition metal oxides are widely used as electrocatalysts; however, they often suffer from intrinsic disadvantages, including low atom utilization, small surface area, and unfavorable tunability. Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), as a new family of catalytic materials, are attracting extensive attention due to their unique physicochemical properties. The tremendous pristine MOF-based materials are created using various synthetic approaches and further used for important energy conversions. Herein, a systematic overview on the unique merits and the state-of-the-art design of MOF-based electrocatalysts is offered. This review also presents recent advances in the development of various pristine MOFs and MOF-based host-guest composite catalysts for electrocatalysis (i.e., oxygen reduction reaction, hydrogen oxidation reaction, hydrogen evolution reaction, oxygen evolution reaction, and CO₂ reduction reaction) and discusses the future challenges and opportunities in this emerging field.