Covalent organic frameworks (COFs), an emerging category of crystalline porous materials assembled from organic building blocks via covalent linkages, have attracted enormous research interest. Conventional solvothermal synthesis of COFs typically requires high temperatures and extended reaction times of three days or more, posing substantial barriers to their rapid discovery and practical applications. Thus, achieving efficient COFs synthesis while preserving their inherent characteristics is highly desirable, as it effectively cuts down on costs, time, and energy input, while also reducing unnecessary trial-and-error experiments. To tackle the inefficient synthesis of COFs, substantial research has been devoted to developing rapid synthetic routes via optimized strategies and post-treatment activation, which has dramatically shortened reaction durations from days to hours, or even seconds in certain instances. Herein, we present a thorough overview of advances in the rapid synthesis of COFs. Despite the infancy of this field, eight representative strategies for the rapid synthesis of COFs have been established, showing versatile applications in adsorption, separation, catalysis, environmental remediation, and biomedicine. This review further outlines current challenges and provides future perspectives for fast-synthesized COF materials.
