Zirconium Metal-Organic Frameworks for Organic Pollutant Adsorption

The rapid expansion of manufacturing and the industrialization of agriculture during the 20th century pervaded surface and groundwater sources with organic contaminants including agrochemicals, dyes, and pharmaceuticals. Efficient purification of these water sources is critical to safeguard human health and Earth's ecosystems. Of the numerous strategies investigated for water purification, adsorption has received the most attention; however, the ability to design a sorbent with high uptake capacity and selectivity for a single pollutant continues to elude researchers. The precise synthetic control over chemical functionality offered by metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) make them ideal scaffolds for the systematic investigation of selectivity-enhancing binding interactions. Herein, we review the recent reports on the use of water-stable zirconium-based MOFs (Zr-MOFs) to extract organic pollutants from water and briefly discuss the field's future directions.