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Updated: Mar 20, 2026

Development of Heterogeneous Enantioselective Catalysts using Chiral Metal-Organic Frameworks MOFs
Published on: January 17, 2020
Probing the correlations between the defects in metal-organic frameworks and their catalytic activity by an epoxide
Yangyang Liu1, Rachel C Klet1, Joseph T Hupp1
1Department of Chemistry, Northwestern University, 2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston, Illinois 60208, USA. o-farha@northwestern.edu.
Abstract:
Seven Zr/Hf-based MOFs with different degrees of defects were obtained by modulating the synthetic conditions. The number of missing linkers in these MOFs was calculated based on potentiometric acid-base titration. The number of defects was found to correlate quantitatively with the catalytic activity of UiO-type MOFs for an acid-catalyzed epoxide ring-opening reaction. More importantly, we were able to identify a MOF with inherent defective Zr6 nodes, which showed great activity and regio-selectivity for the epoxide ring-opening reaction.
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