Strategies of designing advanced dual-functional metal-organic frameworks for sustainable wastewater treatment applications

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have emerged as promising materials for advanced wastewater treatment owing to their tunable structures and versatile functionalities. A myriad of studies has explored their role in detection, adsorption, and photocatalytic degradation. However, designing MOF-based composites capable of integrating dual functions within one framework remains a considerable challenge. As a result, and despite of their potential, dual-functional MOF systems are still relatively scarce and developing strategies to enable detection and removal/degradation of pollutants with single framework for environment applications has become the focus of many researchers. This review highlights cutting-edge strategies that advance the development of multifunctional MOF-based composites for wastewater treatment, along with future perspectives for their sustainable utilization, current challenges and future research directions. We believe this review would inspire researchers to explore emerging strategies to develop multifunctional MOF for advancing water treatment technologies toward next generation of sustainable environment applications.