Toward Rational Design of Porous Frameworks for CO2 Capture: From POPs and MOFs to Hybrid and Derived Materials

The rapid increase in the CO 2 concentration in our atmosphere poses both environmental and societal challenges, highlighting the urgent need for efficient capture and mitigation technologies. Among the various strategies developed, adsorption-based techniques have gained attention for their operational simplicity and energy efficiency. Traditional adsorbents such as activated carbon and zeolites, however, often struggle with limited CO 2 loading capacity and high regeneration temperatures, which hinder their large-scale applications. In recent years, porous organic polymers (POPs) and, in particular, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have emerged as promising materials due to their high surface area, thermal stability, adjustable pore size, and versatile chemical tunability. The unique metal-organic architecture of MOFs offers remarkable structural flexibility and responsiveness to guest molecules, making them well-suited for selective gas separation. Moreover, targeted functionalization, such as the integration of fluorine or amino acid groups, can introduce tailored adsorption sites and fine-tune their physical and chemical properties for efficient CO 2 capture. This article offers recent and novel advances in MOFs and POPs, with an emphasis on structural modifications, including the incorporation of specific functional groups, pore size control, and the design and construction of hybrid/composite materials to enhance CO 2 adsorption performance. A special emphasis has been placed on the underlying guest-host (CO 2 -MOF) interactions, CO 2 capture mechanisms, and the comparison of the composite material’s performance, as well as outlining key directions for future research toward practical and commercially viable carbon capture technologies.