Recent Progress on Conductive Metal-Organic Framework Films

Because of their outstanding structural, chemical, and functional diversity, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have brought about worldwide interest over the last 2 decades, which have been utilized in a wide range of applications in the fields of gas separation, storage, catalysis, and drug delivery. However, among these applications, MOFs are almost used in the form of powder. Due to their fragility and difficulty in preparing large-area thin film materials, the study of MOF films and their electronic properties is a challenging problem in the research of MOFs. Owing to the low-energy charge transport mode, most MOF films are essentially insulating, which largely limits their applications in fields where electronic charge transport takes place, such as electronics or electrochemistry. So, the introduction of conductivity into the MOF films opens new avenues for their applications in electrochemical sensing, supercapacitors, batteries, electrocatalysis, and electronic devices and makes the research on and with MOF films very active. Herein, the latest progress of conductive MOF films, including the preparation of MOF films, the design and adjustment strategies for constructing intrinsic and doping conductive MOF films, and their applications are reviewed. In addition, the numerous challenges of conductive MOF films are also elaborated.