Abstract:
The development of new pathways to synthesize crystalline, microporous materials has provided a wealth of new materials with new physicochemical properties. For example, the use of organic structure directing agents (OSDAs) for the synthesis of zeolites and zeolite-like materials has enabled the development of materials with interesting structures and properties, e.g., tunable hydrophobicity that has opened the use of these materials as solid catalysts for reactions in aqueous media. Of importance, this synthetic approach has now been used to create the first enantiomerically-enriched, polycrystalline molecular sieve.
Recently, we successfully synthesized the first enantiomerically-enriched, polycrystalline molecular sieve, and showed that it can perform both enantioselective adsorption and catalysis. This interesting new class of chiral solid shows chirality over the nanometer length-scale, and presents new challenges and opportunities for application. I discuss the 30 year journey we took from our initial concepts, through many failures, to ultimate success. Additionally, I describe some of the issues with exploiting the chirality in materials of this type.