Sol-Gel for Metal Organic Frameworks MOFs

Kang Liang, Raffaele Ricco, Julien Reboul, Shuhei Furukawa, and Paolo Falcaro 

More recently, the area of MOF research has shown promises in a variety of other applications, including sensing [9], delivery devices [13], diagnostic tools [13,14], microelectronics [15,16], pollutant sequestration [17-19], and energy production devices [20,21]. Despite the versatility of the synthetic technique, the need to obey the coordination chemistry rules might place limitations to the required functional properties [3]. To this regard, several alternative approaches have been developed to overcome the limitation allowing the incorporation of new functionalities in MOFs [7,22-25]. 

To explore MOF-based device fabrication for industrial applications, spatial control of MOFs onto different supports is another crucial engineering step. In this context, the controlled growth of MOFs (e.g., films) has been successftilly applied for separation [26], sensing [27], bioreactors, catalysis, and protective coatings [28,29]. 

In the broad context of feeing the MOF crystal functionalization and growth, the use of the sol-gel method would offer enormous advantage over other methods. The reason relies on the fine tunability of chemical, crystallographic, morphological, functional properties of sol-gel-based materials [30-32]. Sol-gel technology has been used to prepare oxide systems to form nano/microparticles [33-35], fibers [36-38], thin films [39-41], and monoliths [42-44]. The wide options of structures and compositions afford sol-gel-based materials to be applied to broad applications such as controlled release, catalysis. 

The Sol-Gel Handbook Synthesis, Characterization, and Applications, First Edition. 

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