21 - Light-induced organic transformations over some MOF materials

Abstract

With an aim of developing renewable energy–based processes, more and more current research interest has been devoted to light-induced organic transformations. Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), a class of micro-/mesoporous hybrid materials, are recently emerging as a new type of promising catalysts for light-initiated organic syntheses due to their unique structural characteristics. In this chapter, we briefly introduced the use of some MOFs for photoredox organic transformations. Simple photoredox reactions as well as those light-initiated “one-pot” tandem/cascade reactions over MOF-based photocatalytic systems have been summarized. Our views of the challenges and the future perspective of the applications of MOFs for light-initiated organic transformations were also discussed. Photoredox reactions initiated by photoactive ligands or encapsulated complexes in the MOFs were not included in this chapter because generally these photoactive species function similarly in MOFs as their homogeneous counterparts. We hope that this chapter can serve as a starting point to understand light-initiated organic transformations over MOFs, a very promising yet challenging research field, and to stimulate more extensive research interest to be devoted to this largely unexplored field.