Strategies for Improving the Performance and Application of MOFs Photocatalysts

Residual pollutants in the water treatment process restrict the advanced treatment and purification of wastewater, because most of them have stable structures, and some are not easily to be enriched. Photocatalytic oxidation technology can directly use solar energy to drive a series of chemical reactions, which has advantages such as low energy consumption, mild reaction conditions and rarely secondary pollution. It is an effective way to solve the organic pollution problem in wastewater treatment. The key to this process is to find and design efficient photocatalysts. The current photocatalytic materials mainly include inorganic semiconductors and metal organic frameworks (MOFs). They have been studied for pollutants degradation, hydrogen evolution, CO2 reduction, and organic transformation. But, most of these catalysts have not been used in real application. In this paper, recent research advances in MOFs photocatalysts and the key factors affecting their photocatalytic efficiency were critically reviewed. It is believed that the pursuit of more efficient photocatalyst needs to be considered from the adsorption-photocatalytic mechanism, redox-free radical mechanism, valence-level regulation mechanism and energy transfer mechanism of photocatalysis. It is very necessary to research and develop nanoscale and quantum level mixed valence MOFs photocatalysts, which are constructed by strong electron-donating groups.