This landscape identifies 33 published patent families filed between 2015 and the 2026 data cut-off that combine metal-organic framework or porous coordination polymer chemistry with miniaturization or integration claims, such as thin films, membrane integration or MOF-on-chip devices. That count reflects a deliberately narrow search combining chemistry terms with integration-specific language, so it excludes the much larger body of general MOF synthesis patents. Because publication lags filing by around 18 months, the true number of filed applications for the most recent one or two years is likely higher than currently published.

The assignee base is dominated by universities and national research institutions rather than commercial manufacturers, and the dataset shows no assignee with sustained filing momentum into the latest tracked year. Co-assignee collaboration is rare, with only two pairings identified across all 33 families, indicating that most work here has proceeded as independent institutional research rather than joint industry ventures. Anyone assessing competitive position in this space should look at citation counts and filing venue alongside raw filing counts, since no single filer has consolidated the field.

Filing activity in this dataset peaked at 4 families in 2020 and had eased to 2 by the 2022 midpoint, which is a flat-to-declining pattern rather than sustained growth. This does not necessarily mean commercial interest is fading; publication lag means the last one to two years of any patent trend are systematically undercounted. The more reliable read is that this remains a niche, exploratory filing area that has not yet seen the acceleration typical of a technology entering commercial scale-up.

US10441924B2, assigned to King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, claims a method for fabricating a defect-free MOF membrane using a liquid-phase epitaxy approach, specifying a membrane composition of MSiF6(pyz)2, a thickness under 1,000 micrometres, and a [110] growth orientation relative to the substrate. Anyone working on liquid-phase epitaxial MOF membrane fabrication with this specific composition and orientation should review the claim scope carefully before filing. It does not, however, cover MOF membranes made by other deposition routes, other metal-ligand compositions, or other growth orientations, which leaves considerable room for a differently specified membrane claim.

The clearest gaps sit in branches with only one or two filings against the corpus total of 33: coating processes, polymer-composite processing, capacitor-integrated MOF devices and biomedical delivery applications. Separation processes and catalysis-related chemical processing, by contrast, each carry 18 records and represent denser prior art. A first claim targeting MOF-on-chip capacitor integration or a specific biomedical thin-film delivery mechanism is more likely to find open claim space than one targeting general membrane separation.