Insight into the Role and Strategies of Metal–Organic Frameworks in Direct Methanol Fuel Cells: A Review

Direct methanol fuel cells (DMFCs) offer significant promise for compact gadgets, cars, and immobile power sources toward the simple storage of wet fuel as one of the effective alternative power sources, with minimal environmental effects and elevated energy density. Various basic and technical problems, such as slow methanol electrooxidation, methanol crossover, cathode oversupply, and high precious metal usage, prevent the commercialization of DMFCs. Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) possess multiple benefits, such as very substantial surface-to-volume ratios and the potential to be functionalized with multivalent ligands and metal centers to improve fuel cell avidity. MOFs’ unique characteristics as energy materials have been put to good use in the development of high-performance DMFCs. This review highlights, provides insight into, and discusses the future potential role and approach of MOFs and their obtained materials in designing an efficient DMFC, as well as a mechanistic approach to MOFs in DMFCs. Additionally, in this review, methods for resolving these problems that have been reported in recent years toward the commercialization of DMFCs are discussed. Additionally, the progress of an economical, simple, and more structured DMFC, including a MOF catalyst as an evergreen requirement, is mentioned.