Reticular Porous Materials in Flow Catalysis: Bridging Molecular Design and Process Intensification

Flow catalysis represents a transformative paradigm for sustainable chemical manufacturing, offering superior heat and mass transfer, precise temporal and spatial reaction control, enhanced operational safety, and straightforward scalability compared with conventional batch processes. In parallel, reticular porous materials (RPMs), primarily metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) and covalent organic frameworks (COFs), provide modular platforms with atomically defined active sites, tunable pore microenvironments, and programmable functions that enable rational control over catalytic behavior. The convergence of flow technology with RPMs establishes a powerful bridge between molecular-level catalyst design and process-level intensification. Flow operation enables more precise control over photon delivery, mass transport, and energy utilization than static batch reactors, resulting in higher catalytic efficiency and extended operational lifetimes. This Minireview provides an integrated overview of recent advances across multiple reactor configurations, including packed-bed, suspension, microfluidic, and membrane-integrated flow systems. Particular emphasis is placed on strategies for integrating catalysts into diverse flow configurations, as well as on how flow operation enhances catalyst activity and space-time yields under demanding reaction conditions relative to batch systems. Finally, we outline key challenges and emerging opportunities for RPMs in flow catalysis.