Advances in the application of defect-engineered metal–organic frameworks as adsorbents during the decontamination of wastewater

The application of defect-engineered metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) is gaining momentum during the decontamination of wastewater. Some of the defects introduced by the engineering processes into the MOFs include missing linkers, surfaces vacancies and missing clusters. These unsaturated coordination sites provide additional adsorption active sites and create more pore spaces that facilitate diffusion and mass transfer during the adsorptive removal of pollutants from wastewater. In this paper, the applications of water and chemically stable defective MOFs during adsorption of pollutants in wastewater are explored. The defective MOFs reviewed in this paper include Material of Institute Lavoisier series (MIL), University of Oslo series (UiO), Zeolitic Imidazolate Frameworks series (ZIF) and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology series (HKUST-1). Recent studies on the applications of these defective MOFs are highlighted with the aim of providing insights into their adsorption performance and clearly show the merits of such excellent adsorbents during wastewater decontamination. In addition, challenges and future perspectives of using defect-engineered MOFs during adsorption of pollutants from wastewater are also addressed in this paper.