Catalytic epoxidation of olefin over metal-organic framework solids: A mini-review

By the turn of new millennium, especially last two decades witnessed an explosive growth of metal-organic framework (MOF) chemistry and studies on their functional properties. In the last few years, in particular, usage of metal-organic framework in heterogeneous catalysis have attracted a lot of attention. Catalytic research is mainly focused on the transition metal MOFs, however, of late, non-transition metal-based MOFs are also used. Here, epoxidation/oxidation reaction catalyzed by MOF under heterogeneous condition will be summarized. We have designed quite a few lanthanide metal-based MOFs that showed spectacular catalytic activity in oxidation/epoxidation. This mini-review will give a brief description of catalytic epoxidation over metal-organic frameworks along with research activity in our laboratory on this particular area.