Metal organic frameworks (MOFs) are a class of porous crystalline materials that feature a series of unique properties, such as large surface area and porosity, high content of transition metals, and possibility to be designed and modified after synthesis, that make these solids especially suitable as heterogeneous catalysts. The active sites can be coordinatively unsaturated metal ions, substituents at the organic linkers or guest species located inside the pores. The defects on the structure also create these open sites. The present review summarizes the current state of the art in the use of MOFs as solid catalysts according to the type of site, making special emphasis on the more recent strategies to increase the population of these active sites and tuning their activity, either by adapting the synthesis conditions or by post-synthetic modification. This review highlights those reports illustrating the synergy derived from the presence of more than one of these types of sites, leading to activation of a substrate by more than one site or to the simultaneous activation of different substrates by complementary sites. This synergy is frequently the main reason for the higher catalytic activity of MOFs compared to homogeneous catalysts or other alternative solid materials. Besides dark reactions, this review also summarizes the use of MOFs as photocatalysts emphasizing the uniqueness of these materials regarding adaptation of the linkers as light absorbers and metal exchange at the nodes to enhance photoinduced electron transfer, in comparison with conventional inorganic photocatalysts. This versatility and flexibility that is offered by MOFs to optimize their visible light photocatalytic activity explains the current interest in exploiting these materials for novel photocatalytic reactions, including hydrogen evolution and photocatalytic CO₂ reduction.

The present review describes the use of metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) as porous matrices to embed metal nanoparticles (MNPs) and occasionally metal oxide clusters, which are subsequently used as heterogeneous catalysts. The review is organized according to the embedded metal including Pd, Au, Ru, Cu, Pt, Ni and Ag. Emphasis is also given in the various methodologies reported for the formation of the NPs and the characterization techniques. The reactions described with this type of solid catalysts include condensation, hydrogenations, carbon–carbon coupling, alcohol oxidations and methanol synthesis among others. Remaining issues in this field have also been indicated.

Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) are finding increasing application as solid catalysts for liquid phase reactions leading to the synthesis of fine chemicals. In the present review we have focused on those reports describing the use of MOFs as catalysts for the synthesis of N-containing heterocycles that is a class of organic compounds with high added value due to their therapeutic use as drugs and their remarkable biological activities. After an introduction describing relevant structural features of MOFs and the nature of their active sites, this manuscript is organized according to the type of N-containing heterocycle synthesized employing MOFs as catalysts including pyrimidines, N-substituted piperidines, quinolines, indoles, N-substituted imidazoles, triazoles and heterocyclic amides. Special attention has been paid to the structural stability of MOFs under the reaction conditions, to the occurrence of metal leaching and reusability. The final section of this review provides some concluding remarks and future prospects for the field, with emphasis on showing the superiority of MOFs with respect to other solid catalysts for this type of liquid phase organic reactions and pointing out that the final goal in this research would be the use of these materials as catalysts in real industrial synthesis.