Applications of homochiral metal-organic frameworks in enantioselective adsorption and chromatography separation

Metal-organic frameworks in chiral separation of pharmaceuticals

Stereoselective chiral molecules are responsible for specific biological functions in nature. At present, more than half of the prescribed drugs are chiral. Living organisms display divergent pharmacological responses to the enantiomers, leading to altered toxicity, pharmacokinetics, and pharmacodynamics. Thus, chiral analysis, separation, and extraction are crucial for ensuring enantiomeric purity to develop safe and effective medication. In recent times, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) with appealing structures are gaining importance because of their fascinating properties as a sorbent and stationary phase. MOFs are crystalline porous solid materials built by interconnecting metal ions or clusters and organic linkers. This review explores the advancements in MOFs for the isolation and separation of chiral active pharmaceutical drugs.

Recognition in the Domain of Molecular Chirality: From Noncovalent Interactions to Separation of Enantiomers

It is not a coincidence that both chirality and noncovalent interactions are ubiquitous in nature and synthetic molecular systems. Noncovalent interactivity between chiral molecules underlies enantioselective recognition as a fundamental phenomenon regulating life and human activities. Thus, noncovalent interactions represent the narrative thread of a fascinating story which goes across several disciplines of medical, chemical, physical, biological, and other natural sciences. This review has been conceived with the awareness that a modern attitude toward molecular chirality and its consequences needs to be founded on multidisciplinary approaches to disclose the molecular basis of essential enantioselective phenomena in the domain of chemical, physical, and life sciences. With the primary aim of discussing this topic in an integrated way, a comprehensive pool of rational and systematic multidisciplinary information is provided, which concerns the fundamentals of chirality, a description of noncovalent interactions, and their implications in enantioselective processes occurring in different contexts. A specific focus is devoted to enantioselection in chromatography and electromigration techniques because of their unique feature as "multistep" processes. A second motivation for writing this review is to make a clear statement about the state of the art, the tools we have at our disposal, and what is still missing to fully understand the mechanisms underlying enantioselective recognition.

Chiral Metal-Organic Frameworks

In the past two decades, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) or porous coordination polymers (PCPs) assembled from metal ions or clusters and organic linkers via metal-ligand coordination bonds have captivated significant scientific interest on account of their high crystallinity, exceptional porosity, and tunable pore size, high modularity, and diverse functionality. The opportunity to achieve functional porous materials by design with promising properties, unattainable for solid-state materials in general, distinguishes MOFs from other classes of materials, in particular, traditional porous materials such as activated carbon, silica, and zeolites, thereby leading to complementary properties. Scientists have conducted intense research in the production of chiral MOF (CMOF) materials for specific applications including but not limited to chiral recognition, separation, and catalysis since the discovery of the first functional CMOF (i.e., d- or l-POST-1). At present, CMOFs have become interdisciplinary between chirality chemistry, coordination chemistry, and material chemistry, which involve in many subjects including chemistry, physics, optics, medicine, pharmacology, biology, crystal engineering, environmental science, etc. In this review, we will systematically summarize the recent progress of CMOFs regarding design strategies, synthetic approaches, and cutting-edge applications. In particular, we will highlight the successful implementation of CMOFs in asymmetric catalysis, enantioselective separation, enantioselective recognition, and sensing. We envision that this review will provide readers a good understanding of CMOF chemistry and, more importantly, facilitate research endeavors for the rational design of multifunctional CMOFs and their industrial implementation.

Enantioselective chiral sorption of 1-phenylethanol by homochiral 1D coordination polymers

Enantiomeric selectivity is shown within the pores of a 1D coordination polymer, dependent on the nature of the pore space.

A chiral metal-organic framework core-shell microspheres composite for high-performance liquid chromatography enantioseparation

The unique features of uniform and adjustable cavities, abundant chiral active sites, and high enantioselectivity make chiral metal-organic frameworks popular as an emerging candidate for enantioselective separation. However, the wide particle size distribution and irregular shape of as-synthesized metal-organic frameworks result in low column efficiency, undesired chromatographic peak shape, and high column backpressure of such metal-organic frameworks packed columns. Herein, we report the fabrication of chiral core-shell microspheres [Cu₂ (d-Cam)₂ (4,4'-bpy)]_n @SiO₂ composite for high-performance liquid chromatography enantioseparation to overcome the above-mentioned problems. The [Cu₂ (d-Cam)₂ (4,4'-bpy)]_n @SiO₂ packed column gave high-resolution separation of racemates under low column backpressure (10-22 bar), indicating its synergistic effect of the good column packing property of the SiO₂ microspheres and the chiral recognition ability of [Cu₂ (d-Cam)₂ (4,4'-bpy)]_n crystals. Thirteen kinds of chiral compounds including alcohols, amines, ketones, epoxides, and organic bases were well separated with good peak shapes and high column efficiency (18200 plates/m for 1-(9-anthryl)-2,2,2-trifluoroethanol) on the [Cu₂ (d-Cam)₂ (4,4'-bpy)]_n @SiO₂ packed column. Among them, seven pairs of enantiomers achieved baseline separation and the resolution value for 1-(9-anthryl)-2,2,2-trifluoroethanol reached 11.22. Some effects such as column temperature, and analytes mass on the enantioseparations have been investigated. In addition, the [Cu₂ (d-Cam)₂ (4,4'-bpy)]_n @SiO₂ packed column exhibited good stability and repeatability for the separation of chiral compounds. The relative standard deviations for five replicate separations of 1-phenylethanol were less than 1.0, 1.5, 3.0, and 2.0% for the retention time, peak area, number of theoretical plates, and resolution, respectively. The research results demonstrated the development of chiral metal-organic frameworks core-shell microspheres composite provide a promising platform for their practical application in chiral separation fields.

Homochiral metal-organic frameworks for enantioseparation

Obtaining homochiral compounds is of high importance to human health and environmental sustainability. Currently, enantioseparation is one of the most effective approaches to obtain homochiral compounds. Thanks to their controlled synthesis and high efficiency, homochiral metal-organic frameworks (HMOFs) are one of the most widely studied porous materials to enable enantioseparation. In this review, we discuss the chiral pocket model in depth as the key to unlock enantioselective separation mechanisms in HMOFs. In particular, we classify our discussion of these chiral pockets (also regarded as "molecular traps") into: (a) achiral/chiral linker based helical channels as a result of packing modality; and (b) chiral pores inherited from chiral ligands. Driven by a number of mechanisms of enantioseparation, conceptual advances have been recently made in the design of HMOFs for achieving high enantioseparation performances. Herein, these are systematically categorised and discussed. Further we elucidate various applications of HMOFs as regards enantioseparation, systematically classifying them into their use for purification and related analytical utility according to the reported examples. Last but not the least, we discuss the challenges and perspectives concerning the rational design of HMOFs and their corresponding enantioseparations.

Chiral porous organic frameworks and their application in enantioseparation

Porous organic frameworks (POFs) are a kind of porous material with a network structure composed of repeated monomers, which have excellent physical and chemical properties, such as a high surface area, high porosity, uniform pore sizes and structural diversity, and which have aroused broad interest among researchers. With the rapid development of materials science, increasingly more porous materials have been developed and applied, especially metal organic frameworks (MOFs) and covalent organic frameworks (COFs), which have been widely applied in the fields of luminous materials, catalytic research, adsorption and drug transport. One of the most important applications for chiral porous materials is in chiral separation and these materials have become a research hotspot in the field of chromatographic separation and analysis in recent years. In this review, from the viewpoint of enantioseparation, the synthesis of chiral porous materials and their applications in high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), capillary electrochromatography (CEC), and gas chromatography (GC) are reviewed. The typical applications of MOFs in solid-phase microextraction (SPME) are also discussed.

Past, present, and future developments in enantioselective analysis using capillary electromigration techniques

Enantioseparation of chiral products has become increasingly important in a large diversity of academic and industrial applications. The separation of chiral compounds is inherently challenging and thus requires a suitable analytical technique that can achieve high resolution and sensitivity. In this context, CE has shown remarkable results so far. Chiral CE offers an orthogonal enantioselectivity and is typically considered less costly than chromatographic techniques, since only minute amounts of chiral selectors are needed. Several CE approaches have been developed for chiral analysis, including chiral EKC and chiral CEC. Enantioseparations by EKC benefit from the wide variety of possible pseudostationary phases that can be employed. Chiral CEC, on the other hand, combines chromatographic separation principles with the bulk fluid movement of CE, benefitting from reduced band broadening as compared to pressure-driven systems. Although UV detection is conventionally used for these approaches, MS can also be considered. CE-MS represents a promising alternative due to the increased sensitivity and selectivity, enabling the chiral analysis of complex samples. The potential contamination of the MS ion source in EKC-MS can be overcome using partial-filling and counter-migration techniques. However, chiral analysis using monolithic and open-tubular CEC-MS awaits additional method validation and a dedicated commercial interface. Further efforts in chiral CE are expected toward the improvement of existing techniques, the development of novel pseudostationary phases, and establishing the use of chiral ionic liquids, molecular imprinted polymers, and metal-organic frameworks. These developments will certainly foster the adoption of CE(-MS) as a well-established technique in routine chiral analysis.

Highly Stable Zr(IV)-Based Metal-Organic Frameworks for Chiral Separation in Reversed-Phase Liquid Chromatography

Separation of racemic mixtures is of great importance and interest in chemistry and pharmacology. Porous materials including metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have been widely explored as chiral stationary phases (CSPs) in chiral resolution. However, it remains a challenge to develop new CSPs for reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC), which is the most popular chromatographic mode and accounts for over 90% of all separations. Here we demonstrated for the first time that highly stable Zr-based MOFs can be efficient CSPs for RP-HPLC. By elaborately designing and synthesizing three tetracarboxylate ligands of enantiopure 1,1'-biphenyl-20-crown-6, we prepared three chiral porous Zr(IV)-MOFs with the framework formula [Zr₆O₄(OH)₈(H₂O)₄(L)₂]. They share the same flu topological structure but channels of different sizes and display excellent tolerance to water, acid, and base. Chiral crown ether moieties are periodically aligned within the framework channels, allowing for stereoselective recognition of guest molecules via supramolecular interactions. Under acidic aqueous eluent conditions, the Zr-MOF-packed HPLC columns provide high resolution, selectivity, and durability for the separation of a variety of model racemates, including unprotected and protected amino acids and N-containing drugs, which are comparable to or even superior to several commercial chiral columns for HPLC separation. DFT calculations suggest that the Zr-MOF provides a confined microenvironment for chiral crown ethers that dictates the separation selectivity.

Chiral Macroporous MOF Surfaces for Electroassisted Enantioselective Adsorption and Separation

The development of surfaces with chiral features is a fascinating challenge for modern materials science, especially when they are used for chiral separation technologies. In this contribution, the design of hierarchically structured chiral macroporous zeolitic imidazolate framework-8 (ZIF-8) electrodes is presented. They are elaborated by an electrochemical deposition-dissolution technique based on the electrodeposition of metal through a colloidal crystal template, followed by controlled electrooxidation. This generates locally metal cations, which can interact with a chiral ligand present in the solution to form metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). The macroporous structure facilitates the access of the chiral recognition sites, located in the mesoporous MOF, and thus helps to overcome mass transport limitations. The efficiency of the designed functional materials for chiral adsorption and separation can be fine-tuned by applying an adjustable electric potential to the electrode surfaces. This hierarchical chiral ZIF-8 structure was deposited at the walls of a microfluidic device and used as a stationary phase for enantioselective separation. The potential-controlled interaction between the stationary phase and the chiral analytes allows baseline separation of two enantiomers. This opens up interesting perspectives for using hierarchically structured chiral MOFs as an efficient material for the selective adsorption and separation of chiral compounds.

Recent advances in nanomaterial-based capillary electrophoresis

This review gives a summary of applications of different nanomateials, such as gold nanoparticles (AuNPs), carbon-based nanoparticles, magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs), and nano-sized metal organic frameworks (MOFs), in electrophoretic separations. This review also emphasizes the recent works in which nanoparticles (NPs) are used as pseudostationary phase (PSP) or immobilized on the capillary surface for enhancement of separation in CE, CEC, and microchips electrophoresis.

Porous networks based on iron(ii) clathrochelate complexes

Microporous networks based on boronate ester-capped iron(ii) clathrochelate complexes are described. The networks were obtained by covalent cross-linking of tetrabrominated clathrochelate complexes via Suzuki-Miyaura polycross-coupling reactions with diboronic acids, or by Sonogashira-Hagihara polycross-coupling of clathrochelate complexes with terminal alkyne functions and 1,3,5-tribromobenzene. The networks display permanent porosity with apparent Brunauer-Emmett-Teller surface areas of up to SABET = 593 m2 g-1. A clathrochelate complex based on an enantiopure dioximato ligand was used to prepare chiral networks. One of these networks was shown to preferentially absorb d-tryptophan over l-tryptophan.

Recent studies of docking and molecular dynamics simulation for liquid-phase enantioseparations

Liquid-phase enantioseparations have been fruitfully applied in several fields of science. Various applications along with technical and theoretical advancements contributed to increase significantly the knowledge in this area. Nowadays, chromatographic techniques, in particular HPLC on chiral stationary phase, are considered as mature technologies. In the last thirty years, CE has been also recognized as one of the most versatile technique for analytical scale separation of enantiomers. Despite the huge number of papers published in these fields, understanding mechanistic details of the stereoselective interaction between selector and selectand is still an open issue, in particular for high-molecular weight chiral selectors like polysaccharide derivatives. With the ever growing improvement of computer facilities, hardware and software, computational techniques have become a basic tool in enantioseparation science. In this field, molecular docking and dynamics simulations proved to be extremely adaptable to model and visualize at molecular level the spatial proximity of interacting molecules in order to predict retention, selectivity, enantiomer elution order, and profile noncovalent interaction patterns underlying the recognition process. On this basis, topics and trends in using docking and molecular dynamics as theoretical complement of experimental LC and CE chiral separations are described herein. The basic concepts of these computational strategies and seminal studies performed over time are presented, with a specific focus on literature published between 2015 and November 2018. A systematic compilation of all published literature has not been attempted.

Microporous Organically Pillared Layered Silicates (MOPS): A Versatile Class of Functional Porous Materials

The design of microporous hybrid materials, tailored for diverse applications, is a key to address our modern society's imperative of sustainable technologies. Prerequisites are flexible customization of host-guest interactions by incorporating various types of functionality and by adjusting the pore structure. On that score, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have been the reference in the past decades. More recently, a new class of microporous hybrid materials emerged, microporous organically pillared layered silicates (MOPS). MOPS are synthesized by simple ion exchange of organic or metal complex cations in synthetic layered silicates. MOFs and MOPSs share the features of "component modularity" and "functional porosity". While both, MOFs and MOPS maintain the intrinsic characteristics of their building blocks, new distinctive properties arise from their assemblage. MOPS are unique since allowing for simultaneous and continuous tuning of micropores in the sub-Ångström range. Consequently, with MOPS the adsorbent recognition may be optimized without the need to explore different framework topologies. Similar to the third generation of MOFs (also termed soft porous crystals), MOPS are structurally ordered, permanently microporous solids that may also show a reversible structural flexibility above a distinct threshold pressure of certain adsorbents. This structural dynamism of MOPS can be utilized by meticulously adjusting the charge density of the silicate layers to the polarizability of the adsorbent leading to different gate opening mechanisms. The potential of MOPS is far from being fully explored. This Concept article highlights the main features of MOPS and illustrates promising directions for further research.

Recognition Mechanisms of Chiral Selectors: An Overview

Stereospecific recognition of chiral molecules plays an important role in nature as the basis of the interaction of chiral bioactive compounds with the chiral target structures. In separation sciences such as chromatographic and capillary electromigration techniques, interactions between chiral analytes and chiral selectors, i.e., the formation of transient diastereomeric complexes in thermodynamic equilibria, are the basis for chiral separations. Due to the large structural variety of chiral selectors, different structural features contribute to the overall chiral recognition process. This introductory chapter briefly summarizes the present understanding of the structural enantioselective recognition processes for various types of chiral selectors.

Recent advances in metal-organic frameworks and covalent organic frameworks for sample preparation and chromatographic analysis

In the field of analytical chemistry, sample preparation and chromatographic separation are two core procedures. The means by which to improve the sensitivity, selectivity and detection limit of a method have become a topic of great interest. Recently, porous organic frameworks, such as metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) and covalent organic frameworks (COFs), have been widely used in this research area because of their special features, and different methods have been developed. This review summarizes the applications of MOFs and COFs in sample preparation and chromatographic stationary phases. The MOF- or COF-based solid-phase extraction (SPE), solid-phase microextraction (SPME), gas chromatography (GC), high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and capillary electrochromatography (CEC) methods are described. The excellent properties of MOFs and COFs have resulted in intense interest in exploring their performance and mechanisms for sample preparation and chromatographic separation.

Enantioselective incorporation of dicarboxylate guests by octacalcium phosphate

Enantioselectivity by octacalcium phosphate (OCP) is revealed through the incorporation of (S)-(-)-methylsuccinic acid (MeSuc) into its crystal lattice, with hardly any (R)-(+)-MeSuc incorporated. This phenomenon clearly indicates that OCP recognizes the steric structures of guest molecules, extending chiral recognition in inorganic materials to three-dimensional crystal growth.

Chiral recognition in separation science - an update

Stereospecific recognition of chiral molecules is an important issue in various aspects of life sciences and chemistry including analytical separation sciences. The basis of analytical enantioseparations is the formation of transient diastereomeric complexes driven by hydrogen bonds or ionic, ion-dipole, dipole-dipole, van der Waals as well as π-π interactions. Recently, halogen bonding was also described to contribute to selector-selectand complexation. Besides structure-separation relationships, spectroscopic techniques, especially NMR spectroscopy, as well as X-ray crystallography have contributed to the understanding of the structure of the diastereomeric complexes. Molecular modeling has provided the tool for the visualization of the structures. The present review highlights recent contributions to the understanding of the binding mechanism between chiral selectors and selectands in analytical enantioseparations dating between 2012 and early 2016 including polysaccharide derivatives, cyclodextrins, cyclofructans, macrocyclic glycopeptides, proteins, brush-type selectors, ion-exchangers, polymers, crown ethers, ligand-exchangers, molecular micelles, ionic liquids, metal-organic frameworks and nucleotide-derived selectors. A systematic compilation of all published literature on the various chiral selectors has not been attempted.

Nanocellulose Derivative/Silica Hybrid Core-Shell Chiral Stationary Phase: Preparation and Enantioseparation Performance

Core-shell silica microspheres with a nanocellulose derivative in the hybrid shell were successfully prepared as a chiral stationary phase by a layer-by-layer self-assembly method. The hybrid shell assembled on the silica core was formed using a surfactant as template by the copolymerization reaction of tetraethyl orthosilicate and the nanocellulose derivative bearing triethoxysilyl and 3,5-dimethylphenyl groups. The resulting nanocellulose hybrid core-shell chiral packing materials (CPMs) were characterized and packed into columns, and their enantioseparation performance was evaluated by high performance liquid chromatography. The results showed that CPMs exhibited uniform surface morphology and core-shell structures. Various types of chiral compounds were efficiently separated under normal and reversed phase mode. Moreover, chloroform and tetrahydrofuran as mobile phase additives could obviously improve the resolution during the chiral separation processes. CPMs still have good chiral separation property when eluted with solvent systems with a high content of tetrahydrofuran and chloroform, which proved the high solvent resistance of this new material.

Enantioselective adsorption in homochiral metal-organic frameworks: the pore size influence

Uptake experiments in thin films of isoreticular chiral MOFs of type Cu2(Dcam)2(L) with identical stereogenic centers but different pore dimensions show that the enantioselectivity is significantly influenced by the pore size. The highest selectivity was found for medium pore sizes, roughly corresponding to the extension of the chiral guest molecule, limonene.

Facile synthesis of magnetic homochiral metal-organic frameworks for "enantioselective fishing"

Magnetic functionalized homochiral metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) were prepared and applied to efficient enantioselective fishing of chiral drug intermediates. Under optimized conditions, the enantiomeric excess (ee) value as high as 85.2% was achieved for methyl phenyl sulfoxide (MPS) within 3 min.

Planar-chiral building blocks for metal–organic frameworks

The first example of a planar-chiral building block being used for chiral metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) is presented.

Capillary electrochromatographic fast enantioseparation based on a chiral metal-organic framework

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have received great attention because of their unusual properties and fascinating structures in separation sciences. However, to the best of our knowledge, there has been no attempt to utilize chiral MOFs as stationary phases in packed-CEC. Here, a chiral MOF [In3 O(obb)3 (HCO2 )(H2 O)]·solvent (4,4'-oxybisbenzoic acid) was explored as the chiral stationary phase in packed-CEC for separation of chiral compounds and isomers. The fabricated [In3 O(obb)3 (HCO2 )(H2 O)]·solvent packed capillary columns gave fast enantioseparation of (±)-hydrobenzoin, (±)-1-phenyl-1,2-ethanediol, and clenbuterol within 3 min in CEC. Besides, the baseline separations of nitrophenol isomers within 6 min were also achieved. The RSDs for the retention time of run-to-run, day-to-day, and column-to-column reproducibility were 1.51-3.63, 1.83-3.98, and 3.42-5.66%, respectively. These results demonstrate that chiral MOFs are promising for enantioseparation in CEC.