Organic Polymer-Constructed Chiral Particles: Preparation and Chiral Applications

Abstract

Chirality and chiral structures are ubiquitous in nature, and play vital and essential roles in organisms. Polymer particles have attracted substantial interest because of their wide and significant practical applications. Combining fascinating chirality and the advantages of polymer particles in one entity will open up a great number of advanced functional chiral particles. In spite of the great advancements made in this field, there are only a few review articles summarizing the studies dealing with the research subject. Thus, the present article summarizes the latest progress made in the field, especially the literature published from 2018 to 2021. This review first summarizes the preparation methods toward organic polymer chiral particles (OPCPs), including precipitation polymerization, emulsion polymerization, dispersion polymerization, suspension polymerization, post chiralization, self-assembly, and others. Typical applications of the chiral polymer particles in research fields associated with chirality are introduced, ranging from asymmetric catalysis, chromatographic separation, enantioselective crystallization, enantioselective adsorption to drug release. The existing challenges in OPCPs are presented; and future perspectives in the related research fields are also proposed.