Electrospinning of polymer nanofibers based on chiral polymeric nanoparticles

Abstract

Chiral polymeric nanoparticles (NPs) have emerged as a new and exciting field of research and in the last years due to their possible use for many applications in chiral chemistry however the efficiency of separating enantiomerically pure compounds has been always challenging. In this article, we focus on electrospun nanofibers formed by chiral functional NPs based on leucine or phenylalanine amino acids with polysulfone (PSF). Combining chiral functional NPs with PSF in electrospinning method provides us to get intertwined electrospun membranes with chiral property and used them for separation of racemic mixtures. We have also studied chiral functional conventional membranes formed by PSF and NPs. The NPs were prepared by miniemulsion polymerization and were characterized by DLS, SEM, MS, and NMR and display spherical structure with a narrow size distribution in the range of 200 to 250 nm. The characteristics of the membranes in terms of their morphology were analyzed. The permselective properties of the all membranes in the separation of racemic mixture were studied using aqueous solutions of leucine. Time-resolved circular dichroism and chiral column high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) were used to provide evidence for enantioselective separation. Our results show the membrane which is based on PSF and leucine NPs and formed by conventional method gives the best results for enantioselective separation by showing 18% enantiomeric excess (EE).