Defect-engineered chiral metal-organic frameworks.

Abstract

Chirality has an important impact on chemical and biological research, as most active substances are chiral. In recent decades, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), which are assembled from metal ions or clusters and organic linkers via metal-ligand bonding, have attracted considerable scientific interest due to their high crystallinity, exceptional porosity and tunable pore sizes, high modularity, and diverse functionalities. Since the discovery of the first functional chiral metal-organic frameworks (CMOFs), CMOFs have been involved in a variety of disciplines such as chemistry, physics, optics, medicine, and pharmacology. The introduction of defect engineering theory into CMOFs allows the construction of a class of defective CMOFs with high hydrothermal stability and multi-stage pore structure. The introduction of defects not only increases the active sites but also enlarges the pore sizes of the materials, which improves chiral recognition, separation, and catalytic reactions, and has been widely investigated in various fields. This review describes the design and synthesis of various defective CMOFs, their characterization, and applications. Finally, the development of the materials is summarized, and an outlook is given. This review should provide researchers with an insight into the design and study of complex defective CMOFs.