Design strategies for dielectric metal–organic frameworks and their applications in microelectronic devices

Dielectric materials that are currently used in electronic devices rely on conventional inorganic materials, and their inherent shortcomings prohibit conventional materials from being used in advanced electronic architectures. Given numerous intrinsic properties of metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) which include tunable porosity, structural flexibility, guest–molecule confinement and host–guest interactions, MOFs are considered to be potential candidates for achieving the desired dielectric property of any given material by design. In the last decade, a number of reports have appeared on the dielectric properties of MOFs, and a handful of them discuss the integration of MOFs into nanodevices. In light of the emerging development of MOF dielectrics, we report herein on the recent results in the field and formulate general strategies for preparing two different types of MOF dielectrics, low-κ and high-κ. The recent development of thin-film and single-crystal MOF-dielectric devices in applications of transistors, gate dielectrics, capacitors, sensors, and interlayer dielectrics is also discussed. The future prospects and challenges of MOF dielectrics in microelectronics are also discussed.