Recent progress in metal-functionalized germanotungstates: from structures to properties

Abstract

As an important ramification of polyoxometalates, germanotungstate (GT) chemistry has gradually developed as a new research focus and a challenging area, and has made great progress in the past decade due to a wide range of potential applications in various areas such as catalysis, magnetism, photochemistry and materials science. In this review, we mainly focus on three categories of metal-functionalized GTs: transition metal (TM)-substituted GTs (TMSGTs), rare earth (RE)-substituted GTs (RESGTs) and GT-based TM–RE heterometallic derivatives (GTTRHDs). We discuss their synthetic strategies, structural features and some properties involving magnetism, electrochemistry and catalysis. Finally, some perspectives on this field are also provided and some possible directions for future work are outlined.