Metal organic frameworks as self-sacrificing modalities for potential environmental catalysis and energy applications: Challenges and perspectives

Because of their fascinating features such as, high porosity, well defined porous architecture and facile tailorability as well as presence of atomic level components make metal − organic frameworks (MOFs) as one of the most attractive types of architecture from scientific and engineering perspectives. Although they have intrinsic micropores that give them size-selective ability, larger surface area, etc., but the thin holes restrict their use in diffusion-control and processes involving greater size species. In recent years the ability of MOFs to control their crystal development, shape, and subsequently produced pores, template-directing techniques for their replication have opened up new horizons in materials chemistry. Particularly, the self-sacrificing templates have emerged as a breakthrough in environmental catalysis, energy storage devices (rechargeable batteries, supercapacitors etc.) as well in greener energy applications. In this review, various self-sacrificing MOFs based templates as a source to grow the nano-architectures with greater number of functionalities for enhanced performance, have been the topic of discussion. Further, various types of templating materials such as, graphene, zeolites, noble metals, layered metal hydroxides, metal oxides, polymers, silica nanostructures and MOFs itself have been discussed.