Abstract
Covalent organic frameworks (COFs) are highly porous and crystalline polymeric materials, constructed by covalent bonds and extending in two or threedimensions. After the discovery of the first COF materials in 2005 by Yaghi et al., COFs have experienced exciting progress and exhibitedtheirpromising potential applications invarious fields, such as gas adsorption and separation, energy storage, optoelectronics, sensing and catalysis. Because of their tunablestructures, abundant, regular and customizable pores in addition to large specific surface area, COFs can harvest ultraviolet, visible and near-infrared photons, adsorb a large amount of substrates in internal structures and initiate surface redox reactions to act as effective organic photocatalysts for water splitting, CO2 reduction, organic transformations and pollutant degradation. In this review, we will discuss COF photocatalysts for the degradation of aqueous pollutants. The state-of-the-art paragon examples in this research area will be discussed according to the different structural type of COF photocatalysts. The degradation mechanism will be emphasized. Furthermore, the future development direction, challenges required to be overcome and the perspective in this field will be summarized in the conclusion.
Highlights
As human industrialization and civilization processes accelerate and advance rapidly, the excessive dependence on the utilization of fossil fuels has lead to an energy crisis and environmental pollution [1]
Besides well-knownhuge specific surface areas and tailorable shape selectivity that can be favorable toaccumulate and degrade the targeted pollutants, with very trace distribution but very high toxicity from common water, Covalent organic frameworks (COFs) have the most advantage overother current photocatalysts towards mitigation of aqueous pollutants for their capability to minimize the competition of solvent H2 O and other general dissolved organic matter (DOM) to active sites and reactivespecies via highly orderedπ-arrays and covalently fashionedpore structures
Materials in panoramic views, considering the structure design, modification methods and various photocatalysis applications [19,20,22,23], there are still a lack of review articles concentrating on the photocatalytic degradation of aqueous pollutants by COFs
Summary
As human industrialization and civilization processes accelerate and advance rapidly, the excessive dependence on the utilization of fossil fuels has lead to an energy crisis and environmental pollution [1]. The selectivity in the adsorption and desorption processes can be fine-tuned by the tactic design of the monomer building units, the linking reticular chemistry and the dynamic chemical reactions fabricating specific microenvironments with customizable size, polarity, hydrophobicity and electrostatic interaction [14] With these advantages, COFs have promisingly been exhibited as ideal photocatalysts and garnered considerable success in various fields, including photocatalytic watersplitting [15], CO2 reduction [16], organic transformations [17] and pollutant degradation [18]. Besides well-knownhuge specific surface areas (caneasily reach 102 ~103 m2 /g) and tailorable shape selectivity that can be favorable toaccumulate and degrade the targeted pollutants, with very trace distribution but very high toxicity from common water, COFs have the most advantage overother current photocatalysts towards mitigation of aqueous pollutants for their capability to minimize the competition of solvent H2 O and other general dissolved organic matter (DOM) to active sites and reactivespecies via highly orderedπ-arrays and covalently fashionedpore structures. Materials in panoramic views, considering the structure design, modification methods and various photocatalysis applications [19,20,22,23], there are still a lack of review articles concentrating on the photocatalytic degradation of aqueous pollutants by COFs
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