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This article provides a comprehensive review of the nature of catalytic sites in MOFs. In the last decade, a number of striking studies have reported outstanding catalytic activities of MOFs. In all cases, the authors were intrigued as it was unexpected from the ideal structure. We demonstrate here that (surface) defects are at the origin of the catalytic activities for the reported examples. The vacancy of ligands or linkers systematically generates (surface) terminations which can possibly show Lewis and/or Bronsted acido-basic features. The engineering of catalytic sites at the nodes by the creation of defects (on purpose) appears today as a rational approach for the design of active MOFs. Similarly to zeolite post-treatments, post-modifications of MOFs by linker or metal cation exchange appear to be methods of choice. Despite the mild acidity of defective MOFs, we can account for very active MOFs in a number of catalytic applications which show higher performances than zeolites or benchmark catalysts.

To optimally design next generation catalysts a thorough understanding of the chemical phenomena at the molecular scale is a prerequisite. Apart from qualitative knowledge on the reaction mechanism, it is also essential to be able to predict accurate rate constants. Molecular modeling has become a ubiquitous tool within the field of heterogeneous catalysis. Herein, we review current computational procedures to determine chemical kinetics from first principles, thus by using no experimental input and by modeling the catalyst and reacting species at the molecular level. Therefore, we use the methanol-to-olefin (MTO) process as a case study to illustrate the various theoretical concepts. This process is a showcase example where rational design of the catalyst was for a long time performed on the basis of trial and error, due to insufficient knowledge of the mechanism. For theoreticians the MTO process is particularly challenging as the catalyst has an inherent supramolecular nature, for which not only the Bronsted acidic site is important but also organic species, trapped in the zeolite pores, must be essentially present during active catalyst operation. All these aspects give rise to specific challenges for theoretical modeling. It is shown that present computational techniques have matured to a level where accurate enthalpy barriers and rate constants can be predicted for reactions occurring at a single active site. The comparison with experimental data such as apparent kinetic data for well-defined elementary reactions has become feasible as current computational techniques also allow predicting adsorption enthalpies with reasonable accuracy. Real catalysts are truly heterogeneous in a space- and time-like manner. Future theory developments should focus on extending our view towards phenomena occurring at longer length and time scales and integrating information from various scales towards a unified understanding of the catalyst. Within this respect molecular dynamics methods complemented with additional techniques to simulate rare events are now gradually making their entrance within zeolite catalysis. Recent applications have already given a flavor of the benefit of such techniques to simulate chemical reactions in complex molecular environments.

This perspective review paper describes the V-containing metal–organic frameworks that have been developed since the first systematic reports on MOFs almost 15 years ago. These hybrid crystalline materials, containing V(III) or V(IV) as metal nodes, show interesting behavior in oxidation catalysis and gas sorption. A significant amount of papers has appeared on the use of these structures in gas (hydrocarbon, CO2) separation. Promising future research and development of V-MOFs is suggested.