Chiral Phosphoric Acids in Metal-Organic Frameworks with Enhanced Acidity and Tunable Catalytic Selectivity

Chiral phosphoric acids are incorporated into indium-based metal-organic frameworks (In-MOFs) by sterically preventing them from coordination. This concept leads to the synthesis of three chiral porous 3D In-MOFs with different network topologies constructed from three enantiopure 1,1'-biphenol-phosphoric acid derived tetracarboxylate linkers. More importantly, all the uncoordinated phosphoric acid groups are periodically aligned within the channels and display significantly enhanced acidity compared to the non-immobilized acids. This facilitates the Brønsted acid catalysis of asymmetric condensation/amine addition and imine reduction. The enantioselectivities can be tuned (up to >99 % ee) by varying the substituents to achieve a nearly linear correlation with the concentrations of steric bulky groups in the MOFs. DFT calculations suggest that the framework provides a chiral confined microenvironment that dictates both selectivity and reactivity of chiral MOFs.