Chirally modified gold nanoparticles: nanostructured chiral ligands for catalysis

Preparation of novel chiral gold nanoparticles (AuNP)is described. The major advantage of nanoparticles is to combine the easy handling of solid-supported ligands and the efficiency of soluble ligands, as the molecular size of the support approaches the minimum. This is even of industrial interest, because this kind of technology offers a way of avoiding leaching of the catalyst metal in the reaction and separation of the entire catalyst using simple filtration. In this paper, we describe the attachment of a chiral soluble PyOX-ligand on a nano support via simple ligand exchange. As a result, we achieved a core smaller than ever before in experimental chemistry (1.2 +/- 0.2 nm) and promising enantioselectivity in a preliminary test reaction.