Evolution of covalent organic frameworks: From design to real-world applications

Covalent Organic Frameworks are highly versatile porous materials that have attracted much attention over the last few years. This review summarizes the timeline of its development, highlighting the shifts in the targets deemed necessary to use them in real-world applications. We have collected aspects concerning COF formation and the strategies developed to gain chemical stability by using different linkages between the initial building blocks and modulating the structural characteristics of COFs. Importantly, we have also included elements concerning material processability that has been incorporated in the research field of COFs but are essential to solving many different applications of COFs. Finally, we included a summary section providing headlines of this research field to get closer to real applications.