New approaches to the degradation of organic dyes, and nitro- and chloroaromatics using coordination polymers as photocatalysts

Industrial wastewater with organic pollutants has become one of the most serious problems related to our human environment. One possible treatment is to develop environmentally friendly and efficient photocatalysts. Coordination polymers (CPs) with a structural regularity and synthetic stability provide an important possibility to perform photodegradation. Doping CPs with metal ions or loading CPs on carbon nanomaterials can extend their photoresponse region and thus enhance their catalytic activity toward the photodegradation of organic dyes. In this article we briefly highlight some of the latest progress in the photodegradation of organic dyes using modified CP-based catalysts. The decomposition of nitro and chloroaromatics using CPs as photocatalysts is also described.