2022-12-15
News:
The development of chiral catalysts plays a very important role in various areas of chemical science. Heterogeneous catalysts have the general advantage of allowing a more straightforward separation from the products. One specific case of heterogeneous catalysis is electrocatalysis, being potentially a green chemistry approach. However, a typical drawback is that the redox conversion of molecules occurs only at the electrode/electrolyte interface, and not in the bulk of the electrolyte. The second limitation is that the electrodes have to be physically connected to a power supply to induce the desired reactions. To circumvent these problems, we propose here a complementary approach by replacing macroscopic electrodes with an ensemble of self-propelled redox active microswimmers. They move autonomously in solution while transforming simultaneously a prochiral starting compound into a specific enantiomer with a very high enantiomeric excess, accompanied by a significantly increased production rate of the favorite enantiomer.
S. Arnaboldi, G. Salinas, G. Bonetti, P. Garrigue, R. Cirilli, T. Benincori, A. Kuhn
Angew.Chem.Int.Ed. 61 (2022) e202209098
S. Arnaboldi, G. Salinas, G. Bonetti, P. Garrigue, R. Cirilli, T. Benincori, A. Kuhn
Angew.Chem.Int.Ed. 61 (2022) e202209098
Laboratory :
ISM