A Chiral Metal-Organic Material that Enables Enantiomeric Identification and Purification

We show that CMOM-3S, a previously unreported porous crystalline metal-organic material that exhibits intrinsic homochirality, serves as a general-purpose chiral crystalline sponge (CCS) and a chiral stationary phase (CSP) for gas chromatography (GC). The properties of CMOM-3S are enabled by nano-sized channels connected to adaptable molecular recognition sites that mimic enzyme-binding sites. Further, CMOM-3S is composed of inexpensive components, facile to prepare, and requires only trace amounts of analyte. When coupled with the thermal and hydrolytic stability of CMOM-3S, these features mean that a coated fused silica capillary column in which CMOM-3S serves as a CSP is both more versatile and more robust than three benchmark commercial columns. That the enantiomer with the longer GC retention time is consistently captured in CCS experiments enables CMOM-3S to serve as a powerful tool to enable both chiral purification and enantiomer identification.