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Updated: Jan 25, 2026

A Micropatterning Assay for Measuring Cell Chirality
Published on: March 11, 2022
Enantiomer-selective magnetization of conglomerates for quantitative chiral separation
Xichong Ye1, Jiaxi Cui2,3, Bowen Li1
1Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, Key Laboratory of Polymer Chemistry and Physics of Ministry of Education, College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China.
Abstract:
Selective crystallization represents one of the most economical and convenient methods to provide large-scale optically pure chiral compounds. Although significant development has been achieved since Pasteur's separation of sodium ammonium tartrate in 1848, this method is still fundamentally low efficient (low transformation ratio or high labor). Herein, we describe an enantiomer-selective-magnetization strategy for quantitatively separating the crystals of conglomerates by using a kind of magnetic nano-splitters. These nano-splitters would be selectively wrapped into the S-crystals, leading to the formation of the crystals with different physical properties from that of R-crystals. As a result of efficient separation under magnetic field, high purity chiral compounds (99.2 ee% for R-crystals, 95.0 ee% for S-crystals) can be obtained in a simple one-step crystallization process with a high separation yield (95.1%). Moreover, the nano-splitters show expandability and excellent recyclability. We foresee their great potential in developing chiral separation methods used on different scales.
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