Metal -Organic Framework-Derived Hollow Carbon Materials for Electrochemical Energy Storage and Oxygen Reduction Reaction

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are porous coordination polymers with periodic network structures constructed from metal ions/clusters and organic ligands through coordination interactions. Typically, MOFs always have advantageous features of regular pore structures, large specific surface areas, high porosity, designable structures and modifiable pore walls. By virtue of these unique characteristics, the study of MOFs is moving from the coordination chemistry to a broad range of academic disciplines, which is becoming one of the hot topics in intercrossed multi-disciplines. Recent studies show that MOFs are promising candidate precursors for functional carbon materials. On the one hand, the specific surface area and porosity are still kept in the MOFderived carbon materials and various heteroatoms (e.g., N, S, P, and B) can be uniformly doped into the prepared carbon frameworks. On the other hand, the composition, morphology and size of the resultant carbon materials can also be tuned precisely by choosing the appropriate MOF precursors. Currently, MOF-derived hollow carbon materials have drawn widespread attention, mainly because the hollow structures are favorable for alleviating the volume change and impact in the electrochemical processes. Furthermore, hollow structures are more likely to achieve maximum performance benefiting from the fast mass transport and full exposure of active sites. As a result of these properties, MOF-derived hollow carbon materials have shown many applications in a variety of energy devices and areas, such as secondary batteries, capacitors, and electrochemical catalysis. Here, a comprehensive overview of recent developments of MOF-derived hollow carbon materials is provided, including their preparation processes and applications in lithium-ion batteries, lithium-sulfur/selenium batteries, sodium-ion batteries, supercapacitors, and oxygen reduction reaction. Finally, the current challenges and development trends in the future of MOF-derived hollow carbon materials are also discussed.