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Updated: Aug 23, 2025

Development of Heterogeneous Enantioselective Catalysts using Chiral Metal-Organic Frameworks MOFs
Published on: January 17, 2020
Anion-Driven Programmable Chiral Self-Sorting in Metal-Organic Cages and Structural Transformations between
Sandipan Ghorai1,2, Ramalingam Natarajan1,2
1Organic and Medicinal Chemistry Division, CSIR Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, 4 Raja S C Mullick Road, 700031, Kolkata, India.
Abstract:
When a racemic mixture of chiral building blocks self-assembles to form discrete molecular or supramolecular cages, the system can adopt either social or narcissistic chiral self-sorting. However, control over such chiral self-sorting is hard to achieve with a desired choice of outcome. Herein, we report anion templated high-fidelity chiral self-sorting during the coordination-driven self-assembly of [Pd2 L4 ] metal-organic cages, with a racemic mixture of an axially chiral ligand. Upon varying the counter-anions, the outcome of the choice of chiral self-sorting, whether social or narcissistic, leading to kinetically favored heterochiral or thermodynamically favored homochiral cages, can be controlled through specific anion encapsulation. Non-encapsulating anion afforded a mixture of all possible diastereomers. Anion exchange enabled structural transformations between the diastereomers and the conversion of the mixture of diastereomers into homochiral diastereomers.
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