Chiral metal-organic frameworks (cMOFs) are emerging chiral stationary phases for enantioseparation owing to their porosity and designability. However, a great number of cMOF materials show poor separation performance for chiral drugs in high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The possible reasons might be the irregular shapes of MOFs and the low grafting degree of chiral ligands. Herein, MIL-101-Ppa@SiO2 was synthesized by a simple coordination post-synthetic modification method using (S)-(+)-2-Phenylpropionic acid and applied as the chiral stationary phase to separate chiral compounds by HPLC. NH2-MIL-101-Ppa@SiO2 prepared via covalent post-synthetic modification was used for comparison. The results showed that the chiral ligand density of MIL-101-Ppa@SiO2 was higher than that of NH2-MIL-101-Ppa@SiO2, and the MIL-101-Ppa@SiO2 column exhibited better chiral separation performance and structural stability. The binding affinities between MIL-101-Ppa@SiO2 and chiral compounds were simulated to prove the mechanism of the molecular interactions during HPLC. These results revealed that cMOFs prepared by coordination post-synthetic modification could increase the grafting degree and enhance the separation performance. This method can provide ideas for the synthesis of cMOFs.
Keywords: MIL−101(Al)@SiO2; chiral metal–organic frameworks; enantioseparation; liquid chromatography; post-synthetic modification.