Porous Silica Nanospheres Grafted with L-Glutamic Acid for Enantioseparation

Ordered porous silica nanospheres with pores vertical to the walls were prepared by using 1,3,5-trimethyl-benzen (TMB) and hexadecitrile trimethyl ammonium bromide(CTAB) as templates. After removing the templates, porous structures were obtained. The porous silica nanosperes were further modified with amino and amino acid functionalization to obtain L-Glutamic acid-functionalized mesoporous silica nanospheres, which were used as chiral selective agents for amino acid enantioseparation such as PheCOOH, PhgCOOH, and TrpCOOH enantiomers. The experimental results show that the functionalized nanospheres have good adsorption selectivity for D-PheCOOH and L-PhgCOOH, especially showing high adsorption selectivity for the L-TrpCOOH enantiomers compared with L-PheCOOH and D-PhgCOOH and D-TrpCOOH enantiomers.