PI: Nisha Shukla
Co-PI(s): Andrew Gellman
University: Carnegie Mellon University
Industry partner: Leybold USA Inc. and Oerlikon Leybold Vacuum Corp.
Chirality is a property of molecules that is derived from the ‘handedness’ of their molecular structure. This is relevant to the pharmacology of chiral pharmaceuticals which is highly sensitive to their specific chirality, i.e. left or right-handedness. Chirality can also influence the properties of polymers formed from mixtures of chiral monomers. As a result, controlling the chirality of species undergoing chemical processing is critical to their ultimate application. This proposed project uses a method developed by the PI to measure the retention of chirality in the hydration of chiral propylene oxide (PO, CH2(O)CH-CH3) to form chiral propylene glycol (PG, CH2(OH)CH(OH)CH3). In this project, chirality retention will be measured during the aqueous hydration of several alkoxides to form alkane diols. Acidic and basic solutions have been shown to catalyze this reaction and thereby accelerate its rate. The work to be conducted will establish whether catalytic acceleration of the rate also impacts chirality retention. In addition to relevance to pharmaceutical synthesis, this work is of relevance to companies such as Leybold Corp. that have interests in sensors for applications such as detecting chirality.