High temperature sublimation of α-amino acids: a realistic prebiotic process leading to large enantiomeric excessElectronic supplementary information (ESI) available: Sublimation and preparation of samples for GC, the yield of sublimation and the reaction pathway, chiral GC analysis, and Table S1. Sublimation of mixtures of l-Val and non-racemic Leu. See DOI: 10.1039/c5cc00254k

The reiterative high temperature co-sublimation of an enantiopure or an enantioenriched α-amino acid mixed with racemic α-amino acids leads to deracemization of the latter. A synergistic effect is observed for complex mixtures, and the sense of the handedness is, for all compounds, identical to that of the enantioenriched starting material. Reiterative high temperature co-sublimation of mixtures of racemic amino acids in the presence of an enantioenriched derivative leads to high enantiomeric excesses with a sense of the handedness identical to that of the enantioenriched starting material.