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Updated: Dec 7, 2025

Development of Heterogeneous Enantioselective Catalysts using Chiral Metal-Organic Frameworks MOFs
Published on: January 17, 2020
Enzyme-Inspired Assembly: Incorporating Multivariate Interactions to Optimize the Host-Guest Configuration for
Dan Deng1, Qinghao Meng1, Zhangnan Li1
1Key Laboratory of Polyoxometalate Science of Ministry of Education, Northeast Normal University, Changchun 130024, China.
Abstract:
To achieve a rapid asymmetry conversion, the substrate objects suffer from accelerated kinetic velocity and random rotation at the cost of selectivity. Inspired by natural enzymes, optimizing the host-guest configuration will realize the high-performance enantioselective conversion of chemical reactions. Herein, multivariate binding interactions were introduced into the 1D channel of a chiral catalyst to simulate the enzymatic action. An imidazolium group was used to electrophilically activate the C═O unit of a ketone substrate, and the counterion binds the hydrogen donor isopropanol. This binding effect around the catalytic center produces strong stereo-induction, resulting in high conversion (99.5% yield) and enantioselectivity (99.5% ee) for the asymmetric hydrogenation of biomass-derived acetophenone. In addition, the turnover frequency of the resulting catalyst (5160 h-1 TOF) is more than 58 times that of a homogeneous Ru-TsDPEN catalyst (88 h-1 TOF) under the same condition, which corresponds to the best performance reported till date among all existing catalysts for the considered reaction.
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