Homochiral Cu(II) and Ni(II) malates with tunable structural features

Chiral metal-organic frameworks and their composites as stationary phases for liquid chromatography chiral separation: A minireview

Chiral metal organic frameworks (CMOFs) are a kind of crystal porous framework material that has attracted increasing attention due to the customizable combination of metal nodes and organic ligands. In particular, the highly ordered crystal structure and rich adjustable chiral structure make it a promising material for developing new chiral separation material systems. In this review, the progress of CMOFs and their different types of composites used as chiral stationary phases (CSPs) in liquid chromatography for enantioseparation are discussed. The characteristics of CMOFs and their composites are summarized, aiming to provide new ideas for the development of CMOFs with better performance and further promote the application of CMOFs materials in enantioselective high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC).

Facile Synthesis of Ultra-microporous Pillar-Layered Metal-Organic Framework Membranes for Highly H2-Selective Separation

Recently, pillar-layered MOF materials have attracted much attention and shown great potential in separation application due to their fine pore size/channel and pore surface chemistry tunability and designability. In this work, we reported an effective and universal synthesis strategy for preparing ultra-microporous Ni-based pillar-layered MOF [Ni₂(L-asp)₂(bpy)] (Ni-LAB) and [Ni₂(L-asp)₂(pz)] (Ni-LAP) (L-asp = L-aspartic acid, bpy = 4,4'-bipyridine, pz = pyrazine) membranes on a porous α-Al₂O₃ substrate with high performance and good stability by secondary growth. Through this strategy, the seed size reduction and screening engineering (SRSE) is proposed to obtain uniform sub-micron size MOF seeds by high-energy ball milling-combined solvent deposition. This strategy not only effectively addresses the issue of obtaining the uniform small seeds being significant for secondary growth but also provides an approach for the preparation of Ni-based pillar-layered MOF membranes where the freedom of synthesizing small crystals is lacking. Based on reticular chemistry, the pore size of Ni-LAB was narrowed by making use of shorter pillar ligands of pz instead of the longer pillar ligand of bpy. The prepared ultra-microporous Ni-LAP membranes exhibited a high H₂/CO₂ separation factor of 40.4 with H₂ permeance of 9.69 × 10^-8 mol m^-2 s^-1 Pa^-1 under ambient conditions and good mechanical and thermal stability. The superiority of the tunable pore structure and the remarkable stability of these MOF materials showed great potential for industrial H₂ purification. More importantly, our synthesis strategy demonstrated the generality for preparation of MOF membranes, enabling the regulation of membrane pore size and surface functional groups by reticular chemistry.

BioMOF-Based Anti-Cancer Drug Delivery Systems

A variety of nanomaterials have been developed specifically for biomedical applications, such as drug delivery in cancer treatment. These materials involve both synthetic and natural nanoparticles and nanofibers of varying dimensions. The efficacy of a drug delivery system (DDS) depends on its biocompatibility, intrinsic high surface area, high interconnected porosity, and chemical functionality. Recent advances in metal-organic framework (MOF) nanostructures have led to the achievement of these desirable features. MOFs consist of metal ions and organic linkers that are assembled in different geometries and can be produced in 0, 1, 2, or 3 dimensions. The defining features of MOFs are their outstanding surface area, interconnected porosity, and variable chemical functionality, which enable an endless range of modalities for loading drugs into their hierarchical structures. MOFs, coupled with biocompatibility requisites, are now regarded as highly successful DDSs for the treatment of diverse diseases. This review aims to present the development and applications of DDSs based on chemically-functionalized MOF nanostructures in the context of cancer treatment. A concise overview of the structure, synthesis, and mode of action of MOF-DDS is provided.

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.

Recent Bio-Advances in Metal-Organic Frameworks

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have found uses in adsorption, catalysis, gas storage and other industrial applications. Metal Biomolecule Frameworks (bioMOFs) represent an overlap between inorganic, material and medicinal sciences, utilising the porous frameworks for biologically relevant purposes. This review details advances in bioMOFs, looking at the synthesis, properties and applications of both bioinspired materials and MOFs used for bioapplications, such as drug delivery, imaging and catalysis, with a focus on examples from the last five years.

Facile synthesis of a 3D flower-like SiO2-MOF architecture with copper oxide as a copper source for enantioselective capture

Facile synthesis of a 3D flower-like SiO₂–CuLBH architecture with copper oxide as a copper source for enantioselective capture.

A Rapid and Facile Detection for Specific Small-Sized Amino Acids Based on Target-Triggered Destruction of Metal Organic Frameworks

Most of the reported metal organic frameworks (MOFs)-based DNA sensors were developed by utilizing the different adsorption capacities of MOFs to different structural DNAs (for example, single-stranded DNAs (ssDNAs) and double-stranded DNAs (dsDNAs)) or ssDNAs with different lengths. Herein, we introduced another strategy for the design of MOFs-based biosensing platforms. We found that specific small-sized amino acids (for example, glycine and serine) could lead to the destruction of the MOFs formed by [Cu(mal)(bpy)]·2H₂O], thus recovering the fluorescence of a fluorophore-labeled ssDNA that had been quenched by MOFs. The corresponding working mechanism was discussed. On the basis of this finding, a mix-and-detect fluorescence method was designed for the turn-on detection of specific small-sized amino acids. The feasibility of its use in real serum samples was also demonstrated. Besides biosensing applications, the discovery of amino acids-triggered destruction of MOFs can also enrich the building blocks of molecular logic gate. As an example, a biomolecular logic gate that performs OR logic operation was constructed using glycine and a DNA strand as inputs.