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Prochirality

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The concept of prochirality leads to the nomenclature of the individual faces of a molecule and plays a crucial role in the enantioselective reaction. It is a concept where two or more achiral molecules react to produce chiral products. A typical process is the reaction of an achiral ketone to generate a chiral alcohol. Here, the achiral reactant reacts with an achiral reducing agent, sodium borohydride, to generate an equimolar mixture of the chiral enantiomers of the product. For example, an...

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Updated: Oct 28, 2025

Development of Heterogeneous Enantioselective Catalysts using Chiral Metal-Organic Frameworks MOFs

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Published on: January 17, 2020

Recent advances in chiral discrimination on host-guest functionalized interfaces.

Weiwei Xu¹, Ming Cheng, Siyun Zhang

¹Key Laboratory of Pesticide and Chemical Biology (CCNU), Ministry of Education, College of Chemistry, Central China Normal University, Wuhan, 430079, P. R. China. lhbing@mail.ccnu.edu.cn.

Chemical Communications (Cambridge, England)

|July 15, 2021

Summary

Chiral discrimination in artificial systems remains challenging. Recent advances in supramolecular chemistry focus on functionalized interfaces for improved enantioselective identification and separation of chiral molecules.

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Area of Science:

Supramolecular Chemistry
Analytical Chemistry

Background:

Chiral discrimination is crucial in biology, enantiomeric separation, and biochemical sensing.
Artificial systems struggle with accurate, efficient, and cost-effective enantioselective identification of chiral molecules.
Chiral recognition at interfaces is a growing area for electrochemical detection and sensing.

Purpose of the Study:

To review recent advances in fabricating supramolecular functionalized interfaces.
To highlight the application of these interfaces in chiral recognition.

Main Methods:

Development of macrocyclic host functionalized interfaces.
Utilizing interfaces for chiral recognition applications.

Main Results:

Supramolecular functionalized interfaces show promise for chiral recognition.
These interfaces can be employed as chiral catalysts or for enantiomeric separation.

Conclusions:

Fabrication of supramolecular functionalized interfaces is advancing chiral recognition.
Interface-based approaches offer potential solutions to challenges in artificial chiral discrimination.