Construction of a Defective Chiral Covalent Organic Framework for Fluorescence Recognition of Amino Acids

The design and synthesis of chiral covalent organic frameworks (COFs) with controlled defect sites are highly desirable but still remain largely unexplored. Herein, we report the synthesis of a defective chiral HD‐TAPB‐DMTP COF by modifying the chiral monomer helicid (HD) into the framework of an achiral imine‐linked TAPB‐DMTP COF using a chiral monomer exchange strategy. Upon the introduction of the chiral HD unit, the obtained defective chiral HD‐TAPB‐DMTP COF not only displays excellent crystallinity, large specific surface area (up to 2338 m2/g) and rich accessible chiral functional sites but also exhibits fluorescence emission, rendering it a good candidate for discrimination of amino acids. Notably, the resultant defective chiral HD‐TAPB‐DMTP COF can be used as a fluorescent sensor for enantioselective recognition of both tyrosine and phenylalanine enantiomers in water, showing enhanced fluorescent responses for the L conformations over those of the D conformations with enantioselectivity factors being 1.84 and 2.02, respectively. Moreover, molecular docking simulations uncover that stronger binding affinities between chiral HD‐TAPB‐DMTP COF and L‐tyrosine/L‐phenylalanine in comparison to those with D‐tyrosine/D‐phenylalanine play important roles in enantioselective determination. This work provides new insights into the design and construction of highly porous defective chiral COFs for enantioselective fluorescence recognition of amino acids.