Abstract: In recent years, the adsorption of impurities in liquid-phase systems has received increasing attention due to prominent environmental and other issues. Since the adsorbents in liquid-phase adsorption, whether ions or molecules, all have their own characteristics, targeted adsorbents are required for the adsorption of different types of adsorbents. Metal-organic framework materials (MOFs) are widely used due to their good specific surface area and abundant reaction sites. Further, MOFs with functional groups can be more specifically customized for adsorbents with their own characteristics. That is, such MOFs containing functional groups can often become targeted adsorbents, enabling high efficiency and low cost. This article focuses on MOFs containing functional groups, comprehensively summarizes the approaches for introducing functional groups, as well as the ways in which different types of groups achieve targeted adsorption of adsorbates. Finally, the selection strategies of MOFs and adsorbents containing functional groups were proposed. This strategy enables the structural analysis of specific adsorbates, thereby guiding the selection of MOFs with appropriate functional groups for adsorption. However, the inherent powder form of MOFs limits their applications, compositing them with suitable smart substrates can overcome this limitation. In the future, MOFs/smart substrate composites have significant development potential.

Key words: functional gene, liquid-phase adsorption, pertinence, selection strategy, MOFs/smart substrate, composites