A review on zirconium-based metal–organic frameworks: synthetic approaches and biomedical applications

Since the last decade, metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) have received great attention from the materials scientist community owing to their excellent storage capacities, high surface area with tunable porous structures, functionalization-friendliness and biocompatible nature, which enable MOF-based materials to be suitable for biomedical applications. Zirconium-based MOFs (Zr-MOFs) are comparatively stable with low cytotoxicity and high drug-loading capacity. Therefore, Zr-MOFs and their composites have been thoroughly investigated for various bio-related applications such as drug delivery, anti-cancer activity, bio-sensing, and imaging. This review article demonstrates the recently developed synthetic routes for various surface-functionalized Zr-MOFs with their advantages and disadvantages. This review concisely summarizes some important Zr-based MOFs employed for biomedical applications such as drug delivery, immunoassay, antitumor activity, cytotoxicity activity, etc. Finally, a comparative analysis of the mode of action of the Zr-MOFs with varying organic linkers for biomedical applications is also provided to afford new directions for further research.