Recently, nanoscale metal-organic frameworks (nanoMOFs), which leads to the discovery of a variety of properties not observed in their bulk counterparts, have attracted tremendous attention. To be specific, while possessing the properties of bulk MOF materials including high surface area, structural diversity and tailorability etc., nanoMOFs also have some unique advantages, such as accelerated adsorption/desorption kinetics and accessibility to the internal active sites. Moreover, due to their very small sizes and good biocompatibility, nanoMOFs have been widely investigated in biomedicine. In addition, not limited to MOF nanoparticles, their assembly to MOF-based 1-D nanomaterials have also been investigated for catalysis, energy and membrane separation applications. In this review, we first summarize the synthetic strategies of uniform and monodisperse nanoMOFs, and then the intrinsic size-dependent properties towards the most important applications are highlighted as well. Furthermore, the challenges and future prospects of the synthesis and application of nanoMOFs are briefly provided, which we hope will contribute to further push the development of nanoMOF science.

近来，纳米级金属有机框架（nanoMOF）导致发现了在其大宗同类产品中未发现的各种特性，引起了极大的关注。具体而言，纳米MOF具有大块MOF材料的特性，包括高表面积，结构多样性和可定制性等，同时还具有一些独特的优势，例如加速了吸附/解吸动力学和可接近内部活性位。此外，由于纳米MOF的尺寸非常小且具有良好的生物相容性，因此已在生物医学领域进行了广泛的研究。另外，不限于MOF纳米颗粒，还已经研究了它们组装成基于MOF的1-D纳米材料用于催化，能量和膜分离的应用。在这篇评论中 我们首先总结了均匀和单分散纳米MOF的合成策略，然后重点介绍了针对最重要应用的内在尺寸依赖性特性。此外，简要介绍了纳米MOF的合成和应用所面临的挑战和未来前景，我们希望这将有助于进一步推动纳米MOF科学的发展。