4 - Metal-organic frameworks for recognition and sequestration of toxic anionic pollutants

Abstract

Water pollution is increasingly commanding pressing research attention owing to the rise in contamination of water streams across the globe. Anionic pollutants which are generated from varied sources have become a major contributor and their capture and disposal is urgently called for. Porous solids have found remarkable attention for the remediation of priority pollutants owing to high surface areas, long-range order which leads to efficient entrapment of pollutants via adsorption or ion exchange pathways. In this regard, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), which are porous coordination networks, have scored over other porous materials on account of superior features of structure–property correlation, tunable architectures, and modifiable physical/chemical characteristics. Recently MOFs have progressed substantially in the domain of capture and sensing of toxic anionic pollutants, which have been incisively surveyed in this chapter. Based on the trends observed, future directions in this field are discussed.