We have created homochiral porous 2D materials with 2 nm-sized chiral pores using self-assembly process as the first example of porous materials in the world. This sheet is able to capture exclusively one enantiomer from racemic mixture solution with perfect uptake capacity. Considering that conventional separation methods for chiral separation takes many complicated procedures and takes long time, this porous sheet materials provide a highly efficient separation method because the porous sheet materials capture only one enantiomer at once within few minutes and perfect uptake capacity. Moreover, this captured enantiomer can be pumped out spontaneously, not found in any previously-reported porous materials. We expect that this newly-created 2D porous materials offer many opportunities to separate biologically-active drugs and other biomolecules in a highly efficient way and eventually, contribute to humane health issue. This work was published in Nature Materials, June 2018.

(Homochiral porous nanosheets for enantiomer sieving, Nature Materials (2018) DOI: 10.1038/s41563-018-0107-4)