Spontaneous Deracemization

Chirality can emerge spontaneously from racemizing samples in a remarkably efficient manner. The effect results from the stochastic generation of an excess of one enantiomer in the solid and subsequent amplification of the initial material to the bulk. In this review we shall give examples showing how this effect has proved to be an inspiration for the emergence of chirality from chiral materials, and even for the preparation of pharmaceutically important intermediates. While spontaneous deracemization should produce either enantiomer randomly, the kind of system that demonstrates the phenomenon is very prone to the induction of one handedness with extremely small quantities of chiral inducer, which makes the process exploitable in certain cases. This kind of deracemization is the epitome of the origin, transfer and amplification of chirality.