Autocatalytic Enantiomerisation at the Crystal Surface in Deracemisation of Scalemic Conglomerates

Deracemisation of racemic or scalemic conglomerates of intrinsically chiral compounds appears to be a promising method of chiral resolution. By combining the established methods of asymmetric synthesis and the physical process of crystal growth, we were able to achieve a complete deracemisation (with 100 % ee) of an asymmetric Mannich product conglomerate—vigorously stirred in its saturated solution—from a starting enantiomeric excess value of 15.8 % in the presence of pyrrolidine (8 mol %) as an achiral catalyst for the CC bond‐forming reaction. Strong activation of this deracemisation process was observed on mild isothermal heating to only 40 °C, resulting in dramatic acceleration by a factor of about 20 with respect to the results obtained at room temperature. Despite the fact that the racemisation half‐life time of the nearly enantiopure Mannich product (with 99 % ee) in the homogenous solution at the reaction temperature is eight days, the deracemisation process took only hours in a small‐scale experiment. This apparent paradox is explained by a proposed rapid enantiomerisation at the crystal/solution interface, which was corroborated by a ¹³C labelling experiment that confirmed the involvement of rapid enantiomerisation. Frequent monitoring of the solution‐phase ee of the slowly racemising compound further revealed that the minor enantiomer dominated in solution, supporting an explanation based on a kinetic model. A generalisation of the process of “aymmetric autocatalysis” (resulting in automultiplication of chiral products in homogenous media) to encompass heterogeneous systems is also suggested.