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.