Introduction: A Survey of How and Why to Separate Enantiomers

Abstract

This book is about the separation of enantiomers by synthetic methods, which is to say methods involving some chemical transformation as part of the separation process. We do not, in this book, cover chromatographic methods for the separation of enantiomers, nor do we focus on methods based on crystallizations as these have been amply reviewed elsewhere. We are concerned mainly therefore with resolutions that involve a synthetic component, so mostly with the various flavors of kinetic resolutions through to more modern methods such as divergent reactions of racemic mixtures. This introduction briefly clarifies the scope of the book.