Enhancing Electrical Conductivity of Semiconducting MOFs via Defect Healing

Electrically conductive metal-organic frameworks (EC-MOFs) have attracted growing interest with their potential uses in various applications such as electrochemical sensing, energy storage, and electrocatalysis. However, their electrical properties are often underestimated due to poor synthetic control, including unavoidable defects that hinder efficient charge transport. Herein, we demonstrate the defect healing on EC-MOFs, utilizing ligands as healing precursors. The results showed enhanced conductivity values up to 700 times higher when Cu3(HAB)2 was treated with hexaaminobenzene (HAB) ligands than the untreated counterpart. Our finding highlights that facile postsynthetic treatment can further improve conductivity of existing EC-MOFs.