Constructing chiral caves and efficiently separating enantiomers of glutamic acid with novel surface-imprinting technique

Dimethylaminoethyl methacrylate (DMAEMA) was first graft-polymerized onto the surfaces of micron-sized silica gel particles in the manner of grafting from in a solution polymerization system, obtaining the grafted particles PDMAEMA/SiO(2). Then, the molecular imprinting towards the grafted PDMAEMA was conducted with one enantiomer of glutamic acid (Glu), L-Glu, as template molecule and with 2,2'-dichlorodiethylether (DCEE) as crosslinking agent by adopting the novel surface-molecular imprinting technique established by our research group, and the single enantiomer (L-Glu) molecule-imprinted material MIP-PDMAEMA/SiO(2) was obtained. With another enantiomer of glutamic acid, D-Glu, as the contrast compound, the recognition property of MIP-PDMAEMA/SiO(2) for L-Glu was investigated in depth with both static and dynamic methods, and its ability to separate L-Glu and D-Glu in the racemic solution was examined. The experiment results show that the surface-imprinted material MIP-PDMAEMA/SiO(2) has fine recognition selectivity and binding affinity for L-Glu, whereas its ability to combine D-Glu is poor. The selectivity coefficient of MIP-PDMAEMA/SiO(2) for L-Glu with respect to D-Glu is equal to 3.30, displaying an excellent chiral separation result. It is obvious that in this study, the substance separation at the molecular configuration level has been realized successfully. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.