Remarkably selective and enantiodifferentiating sensing of histidine by a fluorescent homochiral Zn-MOF based on pyrene-tetralactic acid

A highly luminescent and water-stable homochiral Zn-MOF, i.e., Zn-PLA, has been developed based on a pyrene-tetralactic acid, which inherently features concave shapes for guest inclusion, to explore sensing of amino acids by fluorescence quenching; the solid-state fluorescence quantum yield of the MOF was found to be 46%. The fluorescence of an aqueous suspension of Zn-PLA was shown to be quenched specifically by histidine amongst all the other...