Amino acid based Covalent Organic Frameworks

Covalent Organic Frameworks (COFs) are organic, porous, crystalline materials with high surface area, which have numerous applications: gas storage, adsorption, and heterogeneous catalysis. Components of biological systems are structured by one-dimensional backbones that would be repetitive in case its building blocks did not bear a variety of side chains, which ordered sequence leads to coded information. The application of the same concept in COFs would allow combining function and information into frameworks. Therefore, the first step is to synthesize a COF containing an amino acid residue covalently bonded within the framework. While synthesis of polypeptides uses solid phase approach proposed by Merryfield, the strategy for COF synthesis holding information can be based on the synthon approach. Herein we describe the successful synthesis of a Covalent Organic Framework having a single amino-acid (L-alanine) derivative and 1,3,5-triformylphenol as building blocks, which is the first step in the challenge of obtaining coded materials.