Enantioselective Chiral Surface Explosions

The high Miller index surfaces of single crystal metals have chiral structures and have been shown to interact enantiospecifically with chiral adsorbates. There are many demonstrations of this phenomenon originating in several laboratories around the world. One specific example is the enantiospecific adsorption of R-3-methylcyclohexanone on Cu(hkl)R&S surfaces. The desorption energies of R-3-methylcyclohexanone adsorbed at R and S kinks differ and the orientation of the molecule at the R and S kinks differ.

Explosive reactions have been observed in a variety of decomposition reaction on surfaces. Very recent work has demonstrated that the decomposition of tartaric acid on Cu surfaces occurs by an explosive mechanism with highly non-linear kinetics. The kinetics of tartaric acids decomposition have been examined on the achiral Cu(110) surface and on the chiral Cu(643) and Cu(17,5,1) surfaces. The reaction occurs by an explsive mechanism on all three. The decomposition on the naturally chiral metals surfaces is more enantioselective than any previously observed surface reaction. The extremely high enantioselectivity arises from both the chirality of the substrate and the highly non-linear nature fo the decomposition reaction kinetics.