Design, synthesis, and applications of defective metal–organic frameworks in water treatment

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have recently garnered significant attention for their potential in water treatment technologies, owing to their unique spatial structures and chemically tunable properties. Defects within MOFs are regarded as excellent tools for enhancing certain material properties. Intentional design and synthesis of defects in MOFs can boost the number of active sites, optimize the framework, increase material conductivity, and fine-tune both structural porosity and chemical properties, thereby elevating their performance in water treatment applications, for instance, catalysis, adsorption, and membrane separation. This review sequentially presents the classification of defective MOFs (encompassing point defects, line defects, planar defects, and mesoscale volume defects), fabrication strategies (including de novo synthesis and post-synthesis treatment), characterization techniques (spanning common spatially resolved measurement techniques and chemical analysis approaches), and their performance in water treatment applications (including catalysis, adsorption, and membrane separation). This review also examines the mechanisms behind the enhanced water treatment performance of defective MOFs and explores the prospective barriers and prospects for their application in water treatment.