Designing Metal-Organic Frameworks for Asymmetric Catalysis

Undergraduates: Sophie Liu, Joseph Falkowski

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Asymmetric catalysts favoring the production of one specific stereoisomer over another are of particular importance in chemical synthesis, especially in applications related to the biological sciences. However, their industrial use is often hindered by the need for extensive purification procedures—often both costly and environmentally detrimental—to remove the heavy metal catalysts from the products. To that end, the heterogenization of established asymmetric catalysts via incorporation into metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), crystalline materials that remain solid in a reaction mixture, allows for the catalysts to be easily separated out from the products and reused. This heterogenization approach for asymmetric catalysts was demonstrated in a series of MOFs constructed from Zn2+ ion clusters linked together with chiral Ru-salen-derived dicarboxylic acid complexes. These MOFs were found to be active in the asymmetric cyclopropanation of substituted terminal alkenes with ethyl 2-diazoacetate.