Template strategies with MOFs

Metal-organic frameworks or MOFs are porous compounds with special properties like controllability in terms of composition and structure coupled with high porosity. These kind of porous materials have enticed a great deal of attention in various fields including energy storage and conversion, ion exchange, separation, sensor, drug delivery, molecular recognition, and catalysis. Also, MOFs have been considered as flexible precursors for synthesis of different nano-materials and novel multifunctional nanocomposites/hybrids with preferable functional characteristics compared to their initial components. Hence, development of different strategies for size and shape controlling of MOFs is very important for obtaining ordered MOFs and their derived materials/hybrids.While synthesis of MOFs is hard to be pmalaced in a determined area with traditional methods, it is possible to use pre-patterned solid matter in desired positions. Application of solid substances as metal ion source has a kinetic role in regulating the coordination behavior of desired MOFs [1]. Even though this is a simple procedure, structures with well-determined shapes are mostly acquired under strict conditions and their shapes can be completely lost. Using templates is a far more versatile method which offers the possibility to achieve a more diverse morphology in MOFs. Furthermore, regular MOFs have been synthesized using soft or hard templates in which the hierarchical MOFs and MOF core–shell heterostructures can also be obtained with appropriate control of parameters such as morphology and size.MOFs have been widely applied as suitable precursors to construct inorganic nanomaterials like metal oxides with certain benefits including simplicity in terms of the processes involved as well as the required equipments, relationship between target product structures and raw materials, usefulness for phase controlling of the final products, greater control upon procedure conditions, purity, particle crystal structure, and particle size, reduced the possible interparticle collisions, being cost effective, in addition to the possibility for large-scale construction [2].