Mechanochemically accelerated sublimations used to separate chiral molecules

Grinding solid materials in a ball mill speeds up sublimation and can be used to separate chiral molecules in a simple way. The finding by scientists in Germany who developed a way to monitor the process in real time using NMR spectroscopy, could open up new possibilities in pharmaceutical research and medicinal chemistry.

‘We introduced a new tool for controlling the way solids turn into gases,’ says Carsten Bolm from RWTH Aachen, who led the project. ‘This has implications for product purification and enantiomer enrichments of chiral compounds, perhaps even impacting questions related to the origin of enantioselectivities in prebiotic life.’