Recent Development and Application of Conductive MOFs

The electrical conductivity of crystalline MOFs is a highly demanding property. The realization of conductivity in MOFs will result in many important applications. The main challenge lies in the balance of porosity and conductivity, which needs a judicious choice of metal clusters and ligands. As a result, there are only a handful of intrinsic conductive MOFs reported with two different conductivity pathways existed independently or simultaneously. These two conductive channels are through bond or through space. A comparable strategy to develop extrinsic conductive MOFs is emerging. With several strategies to access conductive MOFs, many important applications associated with conductivity have been found, such as chemiresistive sensoring, field effective transistors, supercapacitors and so on. Overall, only a small portion of the advantages and potentials of conductive MOFs have been achieved, further development will constantly offer new opportunities.