Chiral analysis by nano-liquid chromatography

Abstract

The concept of stereoisomerism in the biological activity of compounds in living systems emerged in 1948 with the work of Louis Pasteur, who first observed the optical activity of tartaric acid. Enantiomers can produce undesired effects on biological system, due to their different optical activity, even though they possess the same physico-chemical properties in an achiral environment. For this reason, they are a topic that has arisen interest in different areas including pharmaceutical, biomedical, agrochemical and food fields etc. Nowadays, the development of arduous stereospecific synthesis for the production of a single enantiomer gives way to a greater challenge turning attention to the racemic mixture separation by employing analytical methods. This review intends to offer a recent “state of the art” about separation of chiral compounds by nano and capillary liquid chromatography (LC). This overview is organized in two parts. The first one describes general considerations on nano-LC, including some theoretical features and a description of the experimental settings. In addition, enantiomers separation, chiral selectors and chiral stationary phase are also described in the first part or the manuscript. The second part includes the main applications in recent years, applications that confirm the great potential of nano-LC in the field of enantiomeric separation.