The Development and Application of Chirotechnology Using Chiral Crown Ethers for Enantiomer Separation

Chiral crown ethers are synthetic macrocyclic polyethers that bind protonated chiral primary amines with high selectivity and affinity. They have been widely used to separate or distinguish the enantiomers of chiral compounds containing a primary amino moiety by high-performance liquid chromatography, capillary electrophoresis, and NMR spectroscopy. In this paper, two important chiral crown ethers including chiral binaphthyl unit and (18-crown-6)-2,3,11,12-tetracarboxylic acid as chiral selectors are focused. And several chiral resolution techniques and their applications in chirotechnology using these chiral crown ethers with related chiral recognition mechanism studies are reviewed. Especially, it was shown that the commercially available HPLC columns based on (18-crown-6)-2,3,11,12-tetracarboxylic acid have been developed and successfully applied for the resolution of various primary amino compounds including amino acids.