A chiral metal–organic framework fluorescent sensor incorporating H8-BINOL†

Fluorescent chiral chemical sensors with high enantioselectivity enable the identification of enantiomers in an inexpensive, accessible, and rapid manner even at low analyte concentrations. The discrimination of enantiomeric systems is of high importance in pharmaceutical and health sciences due to potential deleterious side effects of specific enantiomers and the potential for disease detection. In this work, the first metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) containing H₈-BINOL showed impressive enantioselective ratios (er) of 14.97 and 12.41 toward aspartic acid dimethyl ester exhibiting unique non-inverted enantioselectivity. The fluorescence behaviour with amino acids and their derivatives are examined with consideration of amino acid side chains, polarity, and intermolecular interactions. We demonstrate that the incorporation of additional steric hindrance with axial chirality is a powerful strategy for enhancing enantioselectivity in fluorescent chiral chemical sensors.