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Surface chemistry

Giving catalysts a hand

Nature Chemistry volume 9, pages 503–504 (2017)Cite this article

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Using chiral modifiers on the surfaces of heterogeneous catalysts is a potentially fruitful route to practical stereoselective chemistry. Now, a study of the dynamics of prochiral adsorbates on modified surfaces has shown that they can rapidly interconvert between adsorption states of different prochirality.

Chiral molecules exist in two non-superimposable mirror image forms — like hands — and so are often referred to as right- or left-handed. The molecules of life (for example, helical DNA) are chiral and, for reasons that are not well understood, it turns out that terrestrial biochemistry is homochiral; all of the sugars and amino acids in living organisms have the same handedness. As a consequence, different mirror images of the same molecule (enantiomers) can have completely different physiological effects and it is therefore important to produce synthetic compounds such as pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals in an enantiomerically pure form. This can, in principle, be achieved using heterogeneous chiral catalysts1.

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Figure 1: The enantioselective hydrogenation of TFAP on (R)-NEA-modified platinum.

References

  1. Gellman, A. J., Tysoe, W. T. & Zaera, F. Catal. Lett. 145, 220–232 (2015).

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  2. Goubert, G. et al. Nat. Chem. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nchem.2753 (2017).

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  1. Wilfred T. Tysoe is in the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 3210 N. Cramer Street, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53211, USA,

    Wilfred T. Tysoe

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  1. Wilfred T. Tysoe
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Correspondence to Wilfred T. Tysoe.

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Tysoe, W. Giving catalysts a hand. Nature Chem 9, 503–504 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nchem.2762

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