Industrializing metal–organic frameworks: scalable synthetic means and their transformation into functional materials

For over two decades, metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) have drawn huge attention in the scientific community, with the promise to solve a wide variety of real-world problems. Despite overwhelming interests for this unique class of porous materials, the progress towards actual utilization falls short of the expectation due to the challenging transition from academia to industry. In this review, an up-to-date summary of the progress for MOF industrialization is presented. The latest developments in scalable production of MOFs and MOF processing from their powdered form are discussed to give a broad overview of the route to MOF commercialization. Their industrial utilization potentials are evaluated as well to provide useful insights for the future development in this field. This review aims to serve as an introduction for multidisciplinary research teams who are interested in developing a commercial market for MOF products. National Research Foundation (NRF) W. L. Teo thanks the Nanyang President’s Graduate Scholarship (NPGS) for funding his doctorate study. This research is supported by the Singapore National Research Foundation Investigatorship (NRF-NRFI2018-03).