Heat-treatment of metal–organic frameworks for green energy applications

Increasing population, global climate change, and dwindling fossil fuel reserves have led to a green energy revolution in the past few years, particularly in the fields of green energy generation and storage. While fuel cell, lithium-ion batteries, and supercapacitors are far from technical jargon in today's world, the sheer number of these devices is not accurately exhibited in the consumer market. Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) are an emerging class of crystalline materials consisting of metal ion nodes and organic linkers that has shown promise in the fields of gas capture, gas storage, separations, catalysis, magnetism, fluorescence, and sensing to name only a few. The use of these materials as self-sacrificing templates, via calcination or pyrolysis, for the design of green energy generation and storage devices is the focus of this review.