Chiral metal organic frameworks (CMOFs) obtained by directly introducing or modifying chiral ligands into metal organic frameworks (MOFs) have become highly anticipated electrochemical chiral sensing materials due to their designability in their structure. However, the synthesis of CMOFs is often limited by the selection of chiral ligands and the method of introduction, which greatly reduce the potential of MOFs in chiral sensing applications. In this work, the strategy of morphological chirality engineering was introduced into the synthesis process of MOFs, and uses amino acids as chiral inducers to induce the growth of MOFs, resulting in MOFs with morphological chirality. By controlling the proportion of amino acids with different configurations, various chiral forms of chiral MOFs can be obtained with this innovative synthesis method, which exhibit good electrochemical stereoselective recognition effects by generating different steric hindrance effects through stereoisomerism. Introducing chiral engineering strategies into the synthesis process of MOFs is expected to break the limitations of traditional CMOFs due to chiral sources and synthesis methods, providing new ideas for further expanding the diversity of electrochemical chiral sensing materials.
Wang et al. (2026) studied this question.