X-ray Crystallographic Evidence in Support of a Proposed Chiral Recognition Mechanism

A new family of pi-basic chiral selectors has been developed and employed in the separation of enantiomers by liquid chromatography. These chiral selectors, derived from (S)-proline and designed from mechanistic considerations, show high levels of discrimination between the enantiomers of N-(3,5-dinitrobenzoyl)amino acid esters and amides. A considerable amount of chromatographic data has been assembled, all of it consistent with the proposed chiral recognition mechanism. Moreover, this mechanism is supported by induced chemical shift differences and intermolecular NOE data previously obtained in solution with an equimolar mixture of (S)-1 and (S)-2. A crystalline 1:1 complex of (S)-1 and (S)-2 has been obtained and analyzed by X-ray crystallography. The structure of this complex in the solid state illustrates the essential features of the mechanism proposed to account for chiral recognition between chiral stationary phase (CSP) 3 and the enantiomers of 2 and related analytes. In addition, the orientation of the two components in the solid state is in close agreement with the structure of the more stable diastereomeric complex deduced from solution-state NMR evidence relating to the same system.