This review highlights the recent progress of bulk and nanoscale coordination polymer (CP) materials for energy transfer. Artificial light-harvesting materials with efficient energy transfer are practically useful for a variety of applications including photovoltaic, white emitting devices, and sensors. In the past decades CP (aka Metal-organic framework, MOF) has experienced rapid development due to a multitude of applications, including catalyst, gas storage and separations, non-linear optics, luminescence, and so on. Recent research has shown that CF is a very promising light-harvesting platform because the energytransfers can occur between different ligands, from ligand to metal centers, or from MOF skeleton to guest species. This review comprehensively surveyed synthetic approaches to light-harvesting CPs, and post functionalization. Sensing applications and achievements in energy-transfer CP nanoparticles and thin films were also discussed. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.