Metal-organic frameworks or MOFs are porous compounds with special properties like controllability in terms of composition and structure coupled with high porosity. These kind of porous materials have enticed a great deal of attention in various fields including energy storage and conversion, ion exchange, separation, sensor, drug delivery, molecular recognition, and catalysis. Also, MOFs have been considered as flexible precursors for synthesis of different nano-materials and novel multifunctional nanocomposites/hybrids with preferable functional characteristics compared to their initial components. Hence, development of different strategies for size and shape controlling of MOFs is very important for obtaining ordered MOFs and their derived materials/hybrids. This review offers an overview of various template strategies for synthesis of MOFs and investigation the morphology effect in MOFs application as well as applying them as precursors and templates for directed synthesis of diverse nano-materials.
