Chiral porous coordination polymer

Through coordination of O-bridged trinuclear Zn2+ clusters with chiral ligands, chiral porous coordination polymers may be obtained.[207] Because the two enantiomers of the ligand may be isolated separately, the obtained porous coordination polymers may also be present as the separate enantiomers. The guest water molecules in the polymer channels may be reversibly adsorbed and desorbed, and this lays the foundation for these... 

Lin and coworkers extended their method to the synthesis of chiral coordination polymers based on the use of rigid bridged ligands derived from the 1,1 binaphtyl framework. Thus homochiral porous coordination networks were prepared however this work will be reviewed in the next chapter of this book. ... 

Catalysis - Porous three-dimensional networks can be viewed as zeolite mimics and can exhibits similar properties in some cases. The enclosed environment within charmels, akin to zeolites (Section 4.2) and discrete capsules (see Chapter 3, Section 3.5), can provide novel reactivity or catalytic ability and can be size- and shape-selective. Coordination polymers offer an advantage over traditional zeolites in that chiral channels are able to be constructed by using chiral ligands. 

In terms of zeolites, chiral pores exist only in a low-temperature form of zeolite /3 [112]. Therefore, zeolites are not inherently suitable for either enantiomeric separations or stereospecific catalysis. As noted recently by Ball [6], the development of a new generation of chiral porous material represents one of the major challenges and objectives that faces crystal engineering. Such materials could find widespread application. Furthermore, coordination polymers have the potential to be inherently catalytically active because the metal centers used as nodes could be selected for their known catalytic activity. The issue of how to design and build chiral porous solids is closely related to that of how to design and build polarity into a solid. The subject of polarity is discussed below. 

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