Recent Progress on Conductive Metal‐Organic Framework Films

Abstract

Because of their outstanding structural, chemical, and functional diversity, metal‐organic frameworks (MOFs) have brought about worldwide interest over the last 2 decades, which have been utilized in a wide range of applications in the fields of gas separation, storage, catalysis, and drug delivery. However, among these applications, MOFs are almost used in the form of powder. Due to their fragility and difficulty in preparing large‐area thin film materials, the study of MOF films and their electronic properties is a challenging problem in the research of MOFs. Owing to the low‐energy charge transport mode, most MOF films are essentially insulating, which largely limits their applications in fields where electronic charge transport takes place, such as electronics or electrochemistry. So, the introduction of conductivity into the MOF films opens new avenues for their applications in electrochemical sensing, supercapacitors, batteries, electrocatalysis, and electronic devices and makes the research on and with MOF films very active. Herein, the latest progress of conductive MOF films, including the preparation of MOF films, the design and adjustment strategies for constructing intrinsic and doping conductive MOF films, and their applications are reviewed. In addition, the numerous challenges of conductive MOF films are also elaborated.

Thin Film Growth of 3D Sr‐based Metal‐Organic Framework on Conductive Glass via Electrochemical Deposition

“… [8] Furthermore, MOFs are generally known to be insulating materials and their deposition as a uniform thin film on conducting substrate is key factor for their applications in the areas of optoelectronics and microelectronics, especially in case of dielectrics, capacitors, transistors, DRAM and LEDs etc. [ 5 , 9 , 10 , 11 ] Uniform growth of MOFs on a substrate plays a significant role in the measurement of charge transport properties of MOFs. [11] Following the continuous progress in designing MOF films, significant efforts have been made to grow MOFs on diverse substrates.…”

“…[ 5 , 9 , 10 , 11 ] Uniform growth of MOFs on a substrate plays a significant role in the measurement of charge transport properties of MOFs. [11] Following the continuous progress in designing MOF films, significant efforts have been made to grow MOFs on diverse substrates. [ 8 , 12 ]…”

“… [30] Such controlled growth of MOFs on conductive substrate can be beneficial in term of expanding the applications of MOFs in the electronics industry. [ 11 , 31 ]…”

Infrared crystallography for framework and linker orientation in metal–organic framework films

“…Scalability and processability are essential for the application of MOFs in numerous fields 12,13 such as optics, 9 photonics, 2 catalytic coatings, sensing, solar cells or for batteries. 14 The majority of these applications rely on the precise crystallographic orientation and uniform porosity of the MOF to allow for e.g. electron- or photoconduction.…”

Efficiently Regulating the Electrical Properties of Flexible Fabric‐Based Cu3(BTC)2 Thin Film by Introducing Various Guest Molecules

“…[ 1–4 ] Different from other porous materials (such as porous carbon, [ 5 ] and zeolites [ 6 ] ), MOFs are a kind of material that has special advantages, such as facile synthesis and a wide range of coordination options that allow for MOFs with tunable pore sizes and shapes. The combination of excellent characteristics, such as high porosity, adjustable pore size, [ 7 ] and large specific surface area, have made it a popular material in recent years for use in electrochemical catalysis, [ 8–11 ] sensing, [ 12–14 ] batteries, [ 15 ] supercapacitors, [ 16,17 ] drug delivery, [ 18 ] gas separation storage, [ 19–22 ] sewage treatment, [ 23 ] desalination, [ 24 ] and other electronic technology industries. Nevertheless, the intrinsic conductivity of most MOFs is extremely low, which is because of the insulating character of the organic ligands and the poor overlap between the π orbitals of organic ligands and the d orbitals of the metal ions.…”