A Data-Driven Approach to the Development and Understanding of Chiroptical Sensors for Alcohols with Remote...

Dynamic covalent chemistry-based sensors have recently emerged as powerful tools to rapidly determine the enantiomeric excess of organic small molecules. While a bevy of sensors have been developed, those for flexible molecules with stereocenters remote to the functional group that binds the chiroptical sensor remain scarce. In this study, we develop an iterative, data-driven workflow to design and analyze a chiroptical sensor capable of assessing challenging acyclic γ-stereogenic alcohols. Following sensor optimization, the mechanism of sensing was probed with a combination of computational parametrization of the sensor molecules, statistical modeling, and high-level density functional theory (DFT) calculations. These were used to elucidate the mechanism of stereochemical recognition and revealed that competing attractive noncovalent interactions (NCIs) determine the overall performance of the sensor. It is anticipated that the data-driven workflows developed herein will be generally applicable to the development and understanding of dynamic covalent and supramolecular sensors.