Chiral Micro and Nano Sized Polymeric Particles: Synthesis and Applications

One of the greatest challenges in modern chemical processing is that of achieving enantiospecific control over molecular chirality. Discovering efficient methods to produce, control and identify enantiomerically pure chiral compounds is critical for the further development of many applications in various. In recent years chiral polymeric particles¹ (micro and nano sizes) receives attention for their potential applications in many chiral processes such as stereoselective synthesis, separation of chiral compounds and optical activity. In this lecture we present our approach^1-6 for the preparation of chiral micro and nano sized polymeric particles based on miniemulsion polymerization of N-acryloyl amino acids monomers. In figure below the SEM images of this new type of chiral polymeric nanoparticles is shown. Using this approach we have prepared lager set of amino acids based chiral nanoparticles. Moreover we will present our results on the use of those chiral polymeric particles for few chiral applications such as chiral crystallization and stereoselective synthesis. Finally we will describe a new method to study the energetics of chiral interactions in chiral polymeric particles based on the use of isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC).

Figure 1. (A) HR- SEM images of amino acid-cased chiral nanoparticles (B) SEM images of chiral -L- phenylalanine microspheres.

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