Metal-Organic Framework as a Photocatalyst: Recent Growth in Environmental Applications

Photocatalysts are considered as an encouraging and environment-friendly technology for solar energy conversion to thermal/chemical energy via interactions between light matters. Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) are considered recently as innovative photocatalysts because of their immense coordination between active metal centers and organic linkers. This property offers unique structural characteristics that contribute to the large surface area, ordered structure, highly porous nature, and ultrahigh structural tunability. The highly porous nature is responsible for concentrating the organic pollutants in the cavity of MOFs to gain enhanced activity, tunable characteristic allows the productive charge separation, and generation of reactive oxygen species capacity is responsible for the speedy decomposition. Such advancement extends enhanced chances for improving their efficiency in several photocatalytic applications such as CO2/H2 generation and environmental remediation. MOFs furnish well-defined advantages in comparison with any other conventional photocatalysts under visible, UV, and NIR light irradiation. Some of the challenges conventional photocatalysts face include inadequate usage of sunlight or restricted active sites. MOFs-based photocatalysts tend to solve several practical problems at an industrial scale. The research on MOF photocatalyzed processes is well in demand, and various mechanistic judgments have been calculated so that their potential can be utilized. Hence, it is substantial, to sum up, this field of research supplies thorough awareness regarding its development and future aspects. This chapter proposes a comprehensive and critical analysis regarding photocatalysis and historical development, synthesis, and modifications in MOF networks. Further, we will also represent the present status of MOFs involved in photocatalytic processes like electron−hole pair, formation of reactive species, and influence on water chemistry in detail. Later on, we will also emphasize the advancements which have been accomplished to date on the photocatalytic performances of MOFs in energy and environmental remediations via experimental investigations.