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24 Chapter 2
adsorbate-surface interactions and/or size-exclusion (molecular sieving effect), such as
selective adsorption of N2/O2,CO2/N2, CO2/H2, etc. [23, 152-156] Moreover, separation of
alkane isotherms from natural gas is also able to be achieved by suitable design of
MOFs. [22-23, 157-158]
Figure 2.15. Widespread potential applications of MOFs. Reproduced from S. Chaemchuen, N. A.
Kabir, K. Zhou and F. Verpoort, Chem. Soc. Rev., 2013, 42, 9304-9332, with permission of The Royal
Society of Chemistry. [159]
Another widely investigated direction of MOFs applications is catalysis. Size- and shapeselective
catalytic behavior could be achieved by utilizing MOFs with suitable porosity and
functional groups/sites. [68, 160] For instance, functionalized 3D MOF with amide groups,
[Cd(4-btapa)2(NO3)2]n∙6H2O∙2DMF, demonstrates catalytic selectivity in the Knoevenagel
condensation reaction due to the relationship between the size of the reactants and the
pore window of the host. [68] Significantly, the presence of catalytically active transitionmetal
centers (loaded nano-particles (NPs), grafted metal complex, or active metal sites)
as well as the organic functional sites in MOFs also enable this kind of porous materials to
be catalysts in a variety of reactions. [27-29, 161] It is typical, that CUSs in MOFs serve as
Lewis-acid catalytic sites to speed up the reactions run under Lewis-acid conditions. [161]
For example, both MIL-101([Cr3F(H2O)2O(bdc)3]) and HKUST-1(Cu3(BTC)2)n) featuring
exposed CUSs have been reported as good catalysts for cyanosilylation of aldehydes. [162-
163] Besides, Lin, Kim and Kaskel demonstrated applications of homochiral MOFs in