Revelation of the chiral recognition of alanine and leucine in an l-phenylalanine-based metal-organic framework.

As a proof-of-concept, an L-phenylalanine-based metal-organic framework Zn-MOF, namely [Zn-2(L-Phe)(2)(bpe)(2)](n), was designed for experimentally revealing the chiral recognition mechanism of alanine and leucine by means of C-13 CP MAS NMR spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and control experiments.