Structuring of metal–organic frameworks at the mesoscopic/macroscopic scale

The assembly of metal ions with organic ligands through the formation of coordination bonds gives crystalline framework materials, known as metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), which recently emerged as a new class of porous materials. Besides the structural designability of MOFs at the molecular length scale, the researchers in this field very recently made important advances in creating more complex architectures at the mesoscopic/macroscopic scale, in which MOF nanocrystals are used as building units to construct higher-order superstructures. The structuring of MOFs in such a hierarchical order certainly opens a new opportunity to improve the material performance via design of the physical form rather than…