A comprehensive review on the exceptional photocatalytic and electrocatalytic applications of MOFs and COFs in energy generation and organic synthesis

Carbon fuels are the most trusted energy sources for the last many decades. However, rapid development in various manufacturing industries has caused exceptional usage of hydrocarbon fuels. As a result, many burning issues such as rapidly depleting hydrocarbon sources, increased energy prices and rapidly warming atmosphere have been developed. Photocatalysis is a green process and can be used to generate high energy modules from water, and carbon dioxide. The process is extremely beneficial to reduce the impacts of CO2 by converting it into energy rich modules. Many different semiconductors have been used to realize energy crises, environmental issues, and organic synthesis. However, insufficient solar light absorption and poor charge separation are mainly encountered in the way of efficient photocatalysis. Metal organic frameworks (MOFs), and covalent organic frameworks (COFs) are the recently introduced modules in many fields to address energy production and environmental issues. Owing to their special characteristics of porous nature, huge flexibility in structural morphology and high surface area, both MOFs and COFs are frequently used to assist native semiconductor materials in terms of light absorption, charge separation and redox species adsorption. They are believed to accelerate sluggish redox kinetics significantly. In this review article, we have discussed the role of MOFs and COFs in solar light driven photocatalysis, photoelectrocatalysis and electrocatalysis for energy production and organic synthesis. We have thrown a bird eye view on the future prospect and research gap in the application of both MOFs and COFs for different applications.