Chiral Nanochannels of Ordered Mesoporous Silica Constructed by a Pillar[5]arene-Based Host–Guest System
Ming Cheng, Fei Zhu, Weiwei Xu, Siyun Zhang, Manivannan Kalavathi Dhinakaran, Haibing Li
Abstract
The separation of racemic compounds by chiral nanochannels has attracted extensive attention. However, the fabrication of high-performance chiral nanochannels is still a challenge owing to the difficulty in magnifying the weak chiral interaction to macroscopic properties of materials. Herein, by introducing a l-alanine-pillar[5]arene host to achiral ordered mesoporous silica (OMS), chiral OMS nanochannels were fabricated, which exhibited excellent selectivity (ee value up to 90.2%) to separate racemic drugs with promising reusability and stability. Besides, it was identified that enantioselective separation took place through a molecular-recognition-adsorbed transport mechanism. This work highlights the great potential of chiral OMS nanochannels as a platform for enantioselective separation.