Recent Advances in Reticular Chemistry for Clean Energy, Global Warming, and Water Shortage Solutions

The contemporary global crises concerning clean energy, carbon emission, and water shortage necessitate the creation of innovative materials that can tackle these pressing issues. Addressing these urgent concerns requires a deeper understanding of advanced materials and their versatile chemistry. Despite this, the advancement of material platforms to address these challenges remains formidable. In this respect, reticular chemistry offers an approach to systematically assemble molecular building blocks into crystalline frameworks, enabling precise control over their chemical composition, structure, porosity, and functionality, ultimately leading to the desired properties. Herein, the usage of metal-organic frameworks and covalent organic frameworks are examined in terms of gaseous fuel storage, carbon capture, and water harvesting, highlighting their potential for addressing critical global challenges. Representative examples are evaluated through the lens of reticular chemistry, with an emphasis on exploring the relationship between their structures and properties. Finally, an extensive overview of the rapidly expanding field is provided, along with a summary and forecast of the current challenges and prospective research directions. Addressing global crises-clean energy, carbon emission, and water shortage-demands innovative materials with customizable chemistry. Reticular chemistry allows the systematic assembly of building blocks into frameworks like metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) and covalent organic frameworks (COFs), offering precise control over their properties. This paper reviews MOFs/COFs in addressing the above mentioned issues, providing insight into the research field, and anticipating future directions.image