Introduction

We have developed during recent years of our collaboration chiral encoded mesoporous metals, which combine the benefits of a high active surface area and chiral discrimination, and exhibit remarkable chiral recognition properties. Such chiral imprinted mesoporous metals are not only able to discriminate the enantiomers of the imprinted chiral molecule, but allow also recognition of other chiral molecules having a similar spatial configuration with respect to the imprinted one. This recognition versatility is due to the geometric arrangement of the metal atoms in the imprinted cavities, which allows preferential interaction with the target molecule. We want to explore in this project an extension of this philosophy by opening up the concept not only to other metals, but also other porous materials which can be used for enantioselective detection, separation, crystallization, and synthesis.

Missions and research themes

This project is proposed as a logical extension of the previous project, “ChiraCat”, which was supported by the PICS program of the CNRS from 2017 to 2019. The main topic is focused on chirality; however, it is not only limited to electrocatalytic processes as previously, but enlarged to various chemical processes, ranging from enantioselective sensing to separation and chiral chemical synthesis. These are extremely important issues in contemporary chemistry, because many molecules in our daily life are chiral and are often present in only one of two possible mirror-image forms. One of the important consequences is that the biological and pharmaceutical activity of chiral molecules is directly related to their handedness, which means that the two different enantiomers of a molecule often exhibit dramatically different effects. Thus, the selective detection, separation, and synthesis of chiral molecules is of major importance.

MAIN projects of research

• Design new chiral metal surfaces for wide applications ranging from catalysis/photocatalysis, separation, and crystallization

Academic partners

Principle investigators:

Prof. Alexander Kuhn, Institute of Molecular Sciences, Bordeaux, France

Assoc. Prof. Chularat Wattanakit, VISTEC, Thailand

Partners:

Dr. Gabriel Loget, Institute of Chemical Science, Rennes, France

Prof. Adrian Flood, VISTEC, Thailand