Designing covalent organic frameworks for organic catalysis: bridging reticular and molecular chemistry

Mohammad Ali Shirani, Mohaddeseh Afshari, Ignacio Romero-Muñiz,

Ana E. Platero-Prats, Mohammad Dinari and Felix Zamora

Designing covalent organic frameworks for organic catalysis

How can the structure of a material be designed to make it a more effective catalyst? A review published in Journal of Materials Chemistry A examines this question through covalent organic frameworks (COFs): porous materials whose building blocks can be selected and arranged to create specific chemical environments.

The authors bring together advances in four approaches to COF catalysis. They examine reactions enabled by the framework itself, the design of organic catalytic sites, the incorporation of metals, and the use of COFs to host nanoparticles or enzymes. Together, these approaches show how molecular chemistry and framework design can be combined to develop catalysts for organic transformations.

Organic synthesis underpins work in fields including medicinal chemistry, materials science and optoelectronics. By connecting COF structure with catalytic function, the review offers researchers a useful guide to designing the next generation of catalytic materials.

Read the review: https://zenodo.org/records/17367017