The contamination of water bodies and soil with toxic oxo-anions poses significant environmental and health risks. Conventional water treatment technologies often fall short in addressing the selective and efficient removal of these contaminants due to challenges related to their solubility, mobility, and persistence in natural systems. In this regard, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have emerged as one of the most promising classes of materials for oxo-anion removal. Despite numerous advances in the sensing capabilities of MOFs, the identification of intermediate steps, as well as the precise location and exact binding interactions of the entrapped oxo-anions, is still in its infancy and requires in-depth structural analysis of SC-SC transformations during the ion-exchange processes. In this review, we aim to summarize recent progress in MOF sensors for which SC-XRD structural insights into the entrapped oxo-anions are available and discuss these findings in detail to enhance molecular-level understanding of the ion-exchange process in MOF chemistry. Most importantly, we present a 'critical analysis' section considering several critical aspects that are often overlooked during development and made future recommendations in the 'future prospects' section.
The rising atmospheric CO2 levels demand sustainable technologies for converting CO2 into fuels and chemicals. Photocatalytic CO2 reduction mimics natural photosynthesis but faces great challenges from the inertness of CO2, high CO bond energy, slow kinetics, and competing hydrogen evolution. With ultrahigh surface areas, tunable porosity, and modular architectures, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) serve as a versatile platform, enabling molecular-level integration of light harvesting and catalysis to overcome these limitations. Rational optimization via linker functionalization, heterometal doping, defect engineering, heterojunctions, and morphology control has improved the efficiency and selectivity in CO2 photoreduction. This review summarizes recent advances in framework engineering and their photophysical mechanisms. Despite progress, there still remain great challenges, such as limited visible-light absorption, low charge mobility, rapid recombination, poor stability, difficulty achieving C2+ products, and insufficient operando understanding. Future efforts should focus on π-conjugated frameworks, conductive linkers, single-atom/dual-site centers to enable C-C coupling, and in situ/operando spectroscopies combined with theoretical analysis. Moreover, developing sacrificial-agent-free systems using water as an electron donor shows great promise for practical solar-fuel production.
We present visible-light-driven, metal-free on-DNA thiol-yne reaction using benzil under 365 nm light to synthesize alkenyl sulfides. This mild, aqueous method preserves DNA integrity and enables direct conversion to alkenyl sulfoximines, expanding the chemical space for DNA-encoded library screening.


