Ultrathin Chiral Metal-Organic-Framework Nanosheets for Efficient Enantioselective Separation.

Abstract

Chiral metal-organic framework (CMOF) nanosheets only a few layers thick remain a virgin land waiting for exploration. Herein, the first examples of ultrathin CMOF nanosheets are prepared by the confinement growth of two-dimensional (2D) chiral layers, which are assembled by helical metal-organic chains within microemulsion. This convenient and easily scaled up inverse microemulsion method gives a series of 2D CMOF nanosheets composed of variable metal nodes or chiral ligands. More significantly, thanks to the exceptionally large number of chiral sites exposed on surfaces, the as-obtained CMOF nanosheets exhibit much higher enantioselectivity in chiral separation compared with their bulk counterparts.