Separation of Enantiomers and Racemate Formation in Two-Dimensional Crystals at the Water Surface from Racemic α-Amino Acid Amphiphiles:  Design and Structure

Studies are presented on the two-dimensional (2-D) crystalline packing arrangements of enantiomerically pure and racemic α-amino acid RHC(NH 3 + )CO 2 - monolayers on water and on glycine aqueous solutions, as determined by synchrotron grazing incidence X-ray diffraction. The amphiphiles have been designed such that their racemic mixtures form 2-D crystals which are either heterochiral (for R = C n H 2 n +1 −, n = 10, 12, 16) due to the tendency for herringbone chain arrangements via glide symmetry or homochiral (for R = C n H 2 n +1 CONH(CH 2 ) 4 −, n = 11, 17, 21) by virtue of hydrogen bonding by translation of the amide group in the chains leading to a spontaneous separation into islands of opposite chirality. The two different crystalline motifs led to a correlation between their packing arrangements and induced oriented nucleation of 3-D crystals of α-glycine by these monolayers. The relevance of the present results to the possibility of ordering and spontaneous segregation of racemates of the natural hydrophobic α-amino acids at the air-solution interface is discussed.