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Prochirality

Prochirality

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...

Chirality at Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Sulfur

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Chirality is most prevalent in carbon-based tetrahedral compounds, but this important facet of molecular symmetry extends to sp3-hybridized nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur centers, including trivalent molecules with lone pairs. Here, the lone pair behaves as a functional group in addition to the other three substituents to form an analogous tetrahedral center that can be chiral.
A consequence of chirality is the need for enantiomeric resolution. While this is theoretically possible for all...

Chirality

Chirality

Chirality is a term that describes the lack of mirror symmetry in an object. In other words, chiral objects cannot be superposed on their mirror images. For example, our feet are chiral, as the mirror image of the left foot, the right foot, cannot be superposed on the left foot.
Chiral objects exhibit a sense of handedness when they interact with another chiral object. For example, our left foot can only fit in the left shoe and not in the right shoe. Achiral objects — objects that have...

Molecules with Multiple Chiral Centers

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Molecules that possess multiple chiral centers can afford a large number of stereoisomers. For instance, while some molecules like 2-butanol have one chiral center, defined as a tetrahedral carbon atom with four different substituents attached, several molecules like butane-2,3-diol have multiple chiral centers. A simple formula to predict the number of stereoisomers possible for a molecule with n chiral centers is 2n. However, there can be a lower number where some of the stereoisomers are...

Chirality in Nature

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Chirality is the most intriguing yet essential facet of nature, governing life’s biochemical processes and precision. It can be observed from a snail shell pattern in a macroscopic world to an amino acid, the minutest building block of life. Most of the snails around the world have right-coiled shells because of the intrinsic chirality in their genes. All the amino acids present in the human body exist in an enantiomerically pure state, except for glycine - the sole achiral amino acid.

Fischer Projections

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Learning to draw Fischer projections of molecules and understanding their relevance plays a crucial role in the visual depiction of organic molecules. A Fischer projection is a two-dimensional projection on a planar surface to simplify the three-dimensional wedge–dash representation of molecules. This is especially helpful in the case of molecules with multiple chiral centers that can be difficult to draw. Here, all the bonds of interest are represented as horizontal or vertical lines.

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Self-assembling Morphologies Obtained from Helical Polycarbodiimide Copolymers and Their Triazole Derivatives

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Published on: February 7, 2017

Chiral Silica with Preferred-Handed Helical Structure via Chiral Transfer.

Kei Manabe¹, Sung-Yu Tsai², Satoshi Kuretani¹

¹Department of Applied Chemistry, Faculty of Engineering and Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka Institute of Technology, 5-16-1 Omiya, Asahi-ku, Osaka 535-8585, Japan.

|September 1, 2021

Summary

Researchers created chiral silica with optical activity using a polymer and a chiral dopant. The polymer

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Published on: February 7, 2019

Area of Science:

Materials Science
Polymer Chemistry
Nanotechnology

Background:

Chiral materials are crucial for various applications, including enantioselective catalysis and chiral separations.
Developing cost-effective and scalable methods for synthesizing chiral materials remains a significant challenge.

Purpose of the Study:

To present a novel strategy for fabricating chiral silica with exclusive optical activity.
To utilize achiral polymers functionalized with polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane (POSS) side chains for chiral material synthesis.

Main Methods:

Synthesizing isotactic polymethacrylate-functionalized POSS (it-PMAPOSS) polymers.
Inducing a helical conformation in the polymer using a chiral dopant.
Removing the chiral dopant at high temperatures to memorize the helical structure.
Calcining the polymer to obtain chiral silica.

Main Results:

Achieved a preferred helical conformation of the POSS-containing polymer.
Successfully memorized the array structure of POSS molecules along the helical conformation after dopant removal.
Obtained chiral silica with exclusive optical activity post-calcination.

Conclusions:

The developed strategy provides a new route to synthesize chiral silica from achiral precursors.
The method leverages the structural memory of POSS-containing polymers to impart chirality.
This approach offers potential for scalable production of optically active silica materials.