Synergistic regulation of intermolecular interactions to control chiral structures for chiral recognition

Abstract

Understanding the regulatory mechanism of self-assembly processes is a necessity to modulate nanostructures and their properties. Herein, we have studied the mechanism of self-assembly in the C3 symmetric 1,3,5-benzentricarboxylic amino acid methyl ester enantiomers (TPE) in a mixed solvent system consisting of methanol and water. The resultant chiral structure was used for chiral recognition. The formation of chiral structures from the synergistic effect of multiple noncovalent interaction forces was confirmed by various techniques. Molecular dynamics simulations were used to characterize the time evolution of TPE structure and properties in solution. The theoretical results were consistent with the experimental results. Furthermore, the chiral structure assembled by the building blocks of TPE molecules was highly stereoselective for diamine compounds.