Recent advances in the synthesis of various analogues of MOF-based nanomaterials: A mini-review

Over the last few decades, nanomaterials have become a subject of key research interests and are gaining prominence in technological advancement due to their remarkable physical, chemical, and mechanical features as well as their wide spectrum of applications in different fields. Several analogues of nanomaterials can be fabricated from parent nanomaterials to cater for the downsides of parent nanomaterials and/or to further improve their properties and applications. Carbon-based nanomaterials, polymeric nanomaterials, metal–organic frameworks (MOFs), lipid-based nanomaterials, and semiconductor nanomaterials have been implicated to be precursors in fabricating several analogues with unique characteristics. However, MOF-derived nanostructures are particularly exceptional because of their superb mechanical and chemical stabilities, high specific surface areas, tunable textural properties, and different functionalities, which have found them useful applications in different fields including catalysis, gas sensing, gas storage, drug delivery, among others. In light of this, this review describes different synthetic strategies to fabricate important analogues from MOFs and also highlights their properties and potential applications. Specifically, the use of MOF template strategies and other synthetic protocols to obtain different nanostructures such as nanorods, nanoarrays, nanosheets, nanotubes, nanospheres, and nanodots were discussed. It is expected that this review will provide more insights into the synthesis and optimization of different analogues of nanomaterials and stimulate further research into fabricating other unexploited MOF-derived nanostructures for wider applications. Conclusively, the prospects and challenges towards commercial applications of these nanostructures were mentioned.