New studies on molecular chirality in the gas phase: enantiomer differentiation and determination of enantiomeric excess
Chirality plays a fundamental role in the activity of biological molecules and broad classes of chemical reactions. The chemistry of life is built almost exclusively on left-handed amino acids and right-handed sugars, a phenomenon known as "homochirality of life". Furthermore, most drugs d...
Saved in:
| Published in | Physical chemistry chemical physics : PCCP Vol. 16; no. 23; pp. 11114 - 11123 |
|---|---|
| Main Authors | , |
| Format | Journal Article |
| Language | English |
| Published |
England
01.01.2014
|
| Online Access | Get full text |
Cover
Loading…
| Summary: | Chirality plays a fundamental role in the activity of biological molecules and broad classes of chemical reactions. The chemistry of life is built almost exclusively on left-handed amino acids and right-handed sugars, a phenomenon known as "homochirality of life". Furthermore, most drugs developed in the last decade are of specified chirality. Thus, fast and reliable methods that can differentiate molecules of different handedness, determine the enantiomeric excess of even molecular mixtures, and allow for an unambiguous determination of molecular handedness are of great interest, in particular with respect to complex mixtures. In this perspective article, we discuss the recent developments, with an emphasis on modern spectroscopic methods using gas-phase samples, such as photoelectron circular dichroism, Coulomb explosion imaging, and microwave three-wave mixing.
Emerging techniques for analysing chiral molecules can distinguish enantiomers in chiral mixtures and provide direct information about their handedness. |
|---|---|
| Bibliography: | Melanie Schnell earned her doctorate in physical chemistry in 2004 with Jens-Uwe Grabow on rotational spectroscopic studies of flexible molecules. After a research stay with Jon Hougen at NIST, she joined the Fritz Haber Institute in Berlin. There she became a group leader and developed new methods to produce cold molecules using microwave radiation. Since 2010, she has been an independent Max Planck research group leader, initially at the MPI for Nuclear Physics, and now at the MPI for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter in Hamburg. Her group is involved in high-resolution spectroscopy of complex molecules, in particular, chiral molecules and microwave-three wave mixing. David Patterson has been working with cold atoms and molecules at Harvard University since 2004, and specializes in buffer gas cooling. When not in the lab, he can be found teaching carpentry to teenagers in rural Vermont. ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 |
| ISSN: | 1463-9076 1463-9084 |
| DOI: | 10.1039/c4cp00417e |