Strategies for enhancing the catalytic activity and electronic conductivity of MOFs-based electrocatalysts

Electrocatalysis plays a key role in the modern energy storage and conversion since the introduction of state-of-the-art electrocatalysts contributes to reducing the energy consumption of electrochemical process. Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOFs) are applied as a kind of promising electrocatalysts in the past few years, however, the unsatisfactory catalytic activity and poor electronic conductivity are the main challenges faced by them. Recently, numerous efforts have been devoted to optimize the above aspects for MOFs-based electrocatalytic materials. In this review, we recollect and summarize some of researches based on the following perspectives: (i) based on the reaction mechanism of hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), oxygen evolution reaction (OER), oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), carbon dioxide reduction reaction (CO2RR), nitrogen reduction reaction (NRR) as well as organic oxidation reaction, together with the morphology regulation and structure adjustment of MOFs, the strategies to enhance the intrinsic activity of active sites and increase the number of accessible active sites are discussed, respectively; (ii) the strategies to improve the electronic conductivity are generalized according to the design and construction of MOFs derivatives. Finally, we summarize how to design and construct MOFs-based electrocatalysts to enhance their activity or electronic conductivity, and give some perspectives on the challenges and development of MOFs-based electrocatalysts.