Stimuli‐Responsive Zirconium‐Based Metal–Organic Frameworks

ABSTRACT Stimuli‐responsive materials can convert external stimuli into detectable signals, rendering them ideal candidate materials for the fabrication of a variety of sensors. By combining the structural regularity and softness, metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) have already raised significant advantages in the field of intelligent stimuli‐responsive materials. The MOFs with modular design and construction characteristics provides an ideal research platform for the design, synthesis, and performance regulation of stimuli‐responsive materials. It is, however, still facing severe restrictions in achieving the practical applications of MOF‐based stimuli‐responsive materials, including low sensitivity, poor stability, and unelucidated mechanism. Taking the advantages of their readily tunable chemical components, structures, and high stability, the zirconium‐based MOFs have confirmed to exhibit optimized stimuli‐responsive properties in the past few years. This review summaries and discusses the stimuli‐responsive properties of Zr‐MOFs in terms of five aspects: temperature responses, pressure responses, photo responses, pH responses, and electrical responses, and the relationship between structure and performance is summarized. Finally, the future development and challenges of stimuli‐responsive Zr‐MOFs as well as the potential applications are emphasized.