Recent advances in vacancy engineering of metal-organic frameworks and their derivatives for electrocatalysis

The efficient electrocatalysis plays the key role in the development of electrochemical energy conversion technologies to alleviate energy crisis. Given their multiple active sites and large specific surface areas as electrocatalysts, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) and their derivatives have attracted considerable interests in recent years. Specially, exploring the roles of the enhanced active sites in MOFs and their derivatives is significant for understanding and developing new effective electrocatalysts. Recently, the vital role of vacancies has been proven to promote electrocatalytic processes (such as H₂ or O₂ evolution reactions, O₂ reduction reactions, and N₂ reduction reactions). In order to in-depth exploring the effect of vacancies in electrocatalysts, the vacancies classification, synthetic strategy, and the recent development of various vacancies in MOFs and their derivatives for electrocatalysis are reviewed. Also, the perspectives on the challenges and opportunities of vacancies in MOFs and their derivatives for electrocatalysis are presented.