Metal-Organic Frameworks for Electrocatalysis: Beyond Their Derivatives

Electrocatalysis is at the heart of many significant chemical transformation processes and advanced clean energy technologies. Traditional noble/transition metal oxides are widely used as electrocatalysts; however, they often suffer from intrinsic disadvantages, including low atom utilization, small surface area, and unfavorable tunability. Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), as a new family of catalytic materials, are attracting extensive attention due to their unique physicochemical properties. The tremendous pristine MOF-based materials are created using various synthetic approaches and further used for important energy conversions. Herein, a systematic overview on the unique merits and the state-of-the-art design of MOF-based electrocatalysts is offered. This review also presents recent advances in the development of various pristine MOFs and MOF-based host-guest composite catalysts for electrocatalysis (i.e., oxygen reduction reaction, hydrogen oxidation reaction, hydrogen evolution reaction, oxygen evolution reaction, and CO2 reduction reaction) and discusses the future challenges and opportunities in this emerging field.