Rational design of highly enantioselective composite voltammetric sensors using a computationally predicted chiral...

The use of chiral modifiers is among the simplest and most popular strategies for synthesizing enantioselective voltammetric sensors that are applied for the analysis and discrimination of enantiomerical drugs in various media. The type and structure of the chiral modifier are the key factors for the creation of enantioselectivity to a specified analyte. We suggest a novel approach to the prediction of the quality of a chiral modifier for preparing highly enantioselective sensors. The suggested approach is based on the molecular mechanics modeling of the adsorption of analyte enantiomers on chiral modifiers and on the comparison of the corresponding adsorption energies (ΔE_ads ). The efficiency of our approach is demonstrated using the example of cyclodextrins and chiral single-wall carbon nanotubes as chiral modifiers, and a wide range of chiral analytes. We found that the experimental enantioselectivity (ϑ_exp ) measured using voltammetry linearly correlates with ΔE_ads . The suggested approach also showed good predictive power in application to enantioselective chromatography, which further validates its general applicability.