Ferrocene and its derivatives, especially ferrocene-based coordination polymers (Fc-CPs), offer the benefits of high thermal stability, two stable redox states, fast electron transfer, and excellent charge/discharge efficiency, thus holding great promise for electrochemical applications. Herein, we describe the synthesis and electrochemical applications of Fc-CPs and reveal how the incorporation of ferrocene units into coordination polymers containing other metals results in unprecedented properties. Moreover, we discuss the usage of Fc-CPs in supercapacitors, batteries, and sensors as well as further applications of these polymers, for example in electrocatalysts, water purification systems, adsorption/storage systems.

The solvent-assisted linker exchange (SALE) method was used to produce amino-functionalized yttrium-based UiO-66 [NH2UiO-66­(Y)], which is not obtainable via a direct synthetic method. Remarkably, SALE not only produced relatively highly porous NH2UiO-66­(Y) from completely non-porous 3,3-bpdc-Y but also changed the network topology from 8-connected bcu in 3,3-bpdc-Y to 12-connected fcu in NH2UiO-66­(Y). Based on our knowledge, this is one of the rare cases where SALE changes the whole network topology of the resulting metal–organic framework. NH2UiO-66­(Y) also showed promising ability for selective detection of Cu2+ at a low concentration.