The high and regular porosity of metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) provides exceptional properties suitable for technological applications. The increasing interest of the scientific community is based on the exploration of these advantageous properties for industrial applications. Pure MOFs are specifically designed to offer a huge surface area; such a high specific surface area has been explored and exploited for gas storage, separation, or catalysis in a variety of chemical processes. A different and promising scientific trend aims to combine MOFs with extrinsic functionalities such as functional nanoparticles; this strategy enables the preparation of new nanocomposite materials with unprecedented properties. An interesting case is offered by the synergic combination of magnetic particles with MOF crystals. In the resulting nanocomposite material, the adaptive functional responses can be triggered by an external magnetic field. In this context, different protocols have been developed for the efficient preparation of magnetic framework composites (MFCs), a class of materials that combines magnetic nano- or micro-particles with MOFs crystals. This application paper highlights the progress on MFCs for drug delivery, environmental control, catalysis, sensing and miniaturized device fabrication.

In this review we present a short overview of the main fields of application of mesoporous ordered films obtained via templating self-assembly. These materials, because of their very special properties such as high surface area, ordered porosity, versatile functionalization of the pore surface, have been widely used for developing advanced functional applications. Mesoporous ordered films have also shown a high capability of integration in current material processing technologies also taking advantage of the high flexibility of the synthesis. A surprisingly large variety of devices and applications have been developed so far which ranges from sensors to supercapacitors and biodevices. All these applications have in common the exploitation of ordered porosity on the mesoscale and in general a strong dependence on pore topology, the nature of the pore surface and pore accessibility has been demonstrated for most of the cases. Even if a high number of examples of applications have been reported still many more are expected to come in the near future.

Carbon dots (CDs) are highly-emissive nanoparticles obtained through fast and cheap syntheses. The understanding of CDs’ luminescence, however, is still far from being comprehensive. The intense photoluminescence can have different origins: molecular mechanisms, oxidation of polyaromatic graphene-like layers, and core-shell interactions of carbonaceous nanoparticles. The citric acid (CA) is one of the most common precursors for CD preparation because of its high biocompatibility, and this review is mainly focused on CA-based CDs. The different parameters that control the synthesis, such as the temperature, the reaction time, and the choice of solvents, were critically described. Particular attention was devoted to the CDs’ optical properties, such as tunable emission and quantum yields, in light of functional applications. The survey of the literature allowed correlating the preparation methods with the structures and the properties of CA-based CDs. Some basic rules to fabricate highly luminescent nanoparticles were selected by the metanalysis of the current literature in the field. In some cases, these findings can be generalized to other types of CDs prepared via liquid phase.