High-performance chiral adsorbents are highly required in the pharmaceutical industry to resolve racemates. However, conventional enantioseparation materials always suffer from low efficiency, limited selectivity, high cost, and short shelf life. To overcome these challenges, we proposed constructing coordination frameworks emulating biomacromolecules, such as protein, as a new material for enantioseparation. Amino acids were applied as the starting reagents due to their low cost and high tunability. The amino acids were derived through the condensation reaction into a flexible multi-carboxylic ligand, which could assemble metal nodes to produce a supramolecular framework with enzyme-mimicking pores. Notably, the framework features not only high enantioselectivity and efficiency in separating racemates of multiple drugs but also lasting performance in multi-cycle tests. This work will provide new pathways to construct bio-inspired materials for enantioseparation.

Amino-acid-derived frameworks for enantioseparation

ACS Spring 2022

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.