Advances in molybdenum enriched MOF derived nano-composites for applications outside energy research

Molybdenum containing materials such as molybdenum sulphides, selenides, oxides, carbides and phosphides show impressive catalytic activity. This is particularly true for those bearing structural features like high proportion of accessible active catalytic sites and porous nature. Such catalytic activity diversifies to conventional heterogeneous catalysis, photocatalysis, electrocatalysis and photo-thermo catalysis because these materials are conducive to efficient substrate transport in and out of them. MOF derived and MOF mediated self-sacrificial reaction techniques lead to these desirable structural features in the synthesized materials. Composite nano-scale materials derived from molybdenum based MOFs are being increasingly explored as electrodes for electrocatalytic reactions in energy transformation and energy storage devices. Gradually, molybdenum based materials have found a niche in the field of energy research. Apart from these, the unique morphology of these materials are also being used for other functions such as catalyst for oxidative desulphurization and olefin epoxidation, electrocatalytic sensing of analytes, as nano-medicine carrier, pollutant remover, fire retardant material and so on. These are emerging utilities which demand adequate attention of the scientific community. This review mainly concentrates on the developing applications of molybdenum based MOF derived nano-composites for utilities outside energy research. Broadly, it has been observed that homogeneously distributed active reaction sites, advantage of high conductivity of the nano carbon matrix, synergy between multiple reaction sites and high accessibility of the substrate molecules into their framework provides undeniable catalytic advantage to these composite materials. Again, by altering the synthetic techniques and conditions the composition of the nano-composites may be fine-tuned to obtain desirable results. It has been observed that many of these materials perform better than the individual components of the composites in their respective applications. This shows that these composite materials have potential to be explored in newer areas.