Improving the performance of metal-organic frameworks for thermo-catalytic CO2 conversion: Strategies and perspectives

Climate change caused by the increasing emission of CO2 to the atmosphere has become a global concern. To ameliorate this issue, converting CO2 into valuable chemicals is highly desirable, enabling a sustainable low-carbon future. To this end, developing efficient catalytic systems for CO2 conversion has sparked intense interests from both academia and industry. Taking advantage of their highly porous structures and unique properties, metal−organic frameworks (MOFs) have shown great potential as heterogeneous catalysts for CO2 conversion. Various transformations involving CO2 have been accomplished over MOFs-based materials. Here we provide a comprehensive and up-to-date review on recent advances of heterogeneous CO2 thermocatalysis using MOFs, highlighting relationships between structures and properties. Special attention is given to the design strategies for improving the catalytic performance of MOFs. Avenues available to enrich the catalytic active sites in MOF structures are stressed and their respective impacts on CO2 conversion efficiency are presented. The synergistic effects between each active site within the structure of MOFs and derivatives are discussed. In the end, future perspectives and challenges in CO2 conversion by heterogeneous catalysis with MOFs are described.