Commercial metal-organic frameworks as heterogeneous catalysts

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are porous crystalline materials that have promising applications as heterogeneous catalysts. After describing the composition, textural properties and crystal structure of four commercially available MOFs, we summarize organic transformations for which these commercial MOFs exhibit higher catalytic activity than the corresponding soluble metal salts or metal ion-exchanged zeolites. In the present article, we have focused on reactions requiring Lewis-acid sites or redox centers to illustrate the potential applications and limitations of commercial MOFs. In a final section, we provide our views on future developments whose ultimate target will be the use of a commercial MOF as a heterogeneous catalyst for a real industrial process in fine chemistry, thus, realizing the advantages of these materials with respect to zeolites or other solid catalysts in liquid-phase reactions.