Metal–Organic Framework‐Based Materials for Photocatalytic Hydrogen Peroxide Production: Insights into Mechanism, Modification Strategies, and Environmental Applications

This review highlights seven modification strategies, including linker functionalization, metal-oxo clusters modulation, defect engineering, morphology manipulation, cocatalyst loading, heterostructure construction, and posting-processing to enhance metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) for photocatalytic hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂) production. Modified MOFs exhibit superior light absorption, rapid charge separation/transfer, optimized surface redox sites, and suppress the decomposition of generated H₂O₂. Integrating in situ water decontamination further enables the simultaneous H₂O₂ production and water treatment.

Abstract

Photocatalytic oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and water oxidation reaction (WOR) to produce hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂) have garnered extensive attention due to their economic, low-carbon, and in line with the requirements of energy economy. Currently, metal–organic framework (MOF)-based materials are promising candidates for photocatalytic production of H₂O₂ owing to abundant active sites, ultrahigh porosity and controllable structure. Given the rapid advancement of this field in recent years, there is an urgent need for an exhaustive review to comprehensively investigate the application of MOF-based catalysts with impressive performance in photocatalytic H₂O₂ production. To this end, this review first recaps the reaction mechanism and influencing factors of photocatalytic H₂O₂ production from pristine MOFs, unraveling the deficiencies and modification demands of MOFs. Thereafter, the perspective advances in the modification strategies of MOFs are presented, with special attention on the emerging properties of MOF-based materials for improved photocatalytic performance and enhanced H₂O₂ production. Subsequently, the application of in situ generated H₂O₂ from MOF-based materials for pollutant degradation is outlined deeply. Eventually, the development prospects of photocatalytic H₂O₂ production by MOF-based materials are summarized and prospected, which is expected to provide insight into the fabrication of MOF-based materials for superior photocatalytic H₂O₂ production and efficient environmental remediation.