Lariat ethers in the chiral recognition of amino acid esters:electrospray ionization mass spectrometry investigation

The ability of the crown ethers ( 1 – 4 ), containing the ortho - or para - methoxyphenoxy-methyl substituents in their structure, to chiral recognition in reference to amino acid esters has been investigated by electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ESI-MS). The method allows registering the diastereomeric complexes between the studied crowns as hosts and the protonated alanine, phenylglycine and phenylalanine methyl esters as guests in the gas phase. ESI-MS experiments using isotopically labeled guests provide robust and reproducible results, indicating a moderate degree of chiral discrimination in the series of the studied crown ethers. ESI-MS experiments using achiral amine as a reference yielded the results comparable with the previous method. It has been found that ( S )-enantiomers of the crowns bind predominately ( S )-enantiomers of the amino acid esters, and vice-versa. It has been shown that the chiral ortho -substituted crown ( S )- 1 demonstrates the more pronounced values for chiral discrimination as compared with the para -substituted crown ( S )- 2 . This fact indicates the interrelationship between the chiral recognition and the lariat nature of crown 1 . Increasing the size of the cavity and the presence of a flat aromatic moiety in crowns 3 and 4 strengthens their complexing ability, simultaneously weakening the enantioselectivity of the complexation.