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 [Zn2(l-Phe)2(bpe)2]n, was designed for experimentally revealing the chiral recognition mechanism of alanine and leucine by means of 13C CP MAS NMR spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and control experiments.