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Porosity is a fundamental property of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). However, the role of the pore size has always been underestimated in MOF-based luminescent sensors for enantioselective sensing. The construction of isoreticular MOFs (IRMOFs) with variable pore sizes and the synergy between chirality and luminescence is challenging. Herein, a general strategy was developed to introduce chirality into two well-known IRMOF-74 analogs with nanochannels of identical shapes but different pore sizes by functionalizing the open metal site under mild conditions. To enhance the detection accuracy, a second luminescent center was introduced into the IRMOF-74 system to achieve ratiometric sensing. The two bifunctionalized IRMOF-74 compounds exhibited pore-size-dependent sensing performance for enantiomers. This study not only provides a convenient method to construct chiral MOFs as advanced sensing materials but also reveals the fundamental of the pores in MOF-based luminescent sensors.
Han et al. (Wed,) studied this question.