Enhancing MOF performance through the introduction of polymer guests

[Display omitted] •Recent advances in the field of MOF-polymer composites are briefly reviewed.•Methods for making MOF-polymer composites are noted with their merits and demerits.•Utility of MOF-polymer composites in several relevant applications is reviewed.•Suggestions for future research that might help to further develop the field are discussed. In this contribution, recent advances in the construction of MOF-polymer composites and their corresponding applications are briefly reviewed. The appearance of such architectures is becoming prominent in recent literature, due to the fact that the union of these two dissimilar components can give rise to a number of desirable properties that are not necessarily achieved by the individual components. For instance, while MOFs already boast unprecedented internal surface areas and highly tunable pore structures, they can often suffer from limited stability that results from the weak nature of the coordination bonding. However, recent work, outlined in this review, demonstrates that polymers can enhance MOF stability and even augment other important properties like electrical conductivity. Further, we discuss a number of other studies, where the addition of external polymer coatings or the insertion or grafting of polymer species inside the MOF pores can lead to noticeable performance enhancement in a variety of applications including water treatment, catalysis, small molecule adsorption/separation, small molecule/ion sensing, and bio-delivery. The hope is that this review will highlight the prominence of this newly emerging class of materials and demonstrate their potential in a variety of applications relevant to host–guest chemistry.