Chiral separation in microflows
Soft Condensed Matter
2009-11-11 v2
Abstract
Molecules that only differ by their chirality, so called enantiomers, often possess different properties with respect to their biological function. Therefore, the separation of enantiomers presents a prominent challenge in molecular biology and belongs to the ``Holy Grail'' of organic chemistry. We suggest a new separation technique for chiral molecules that is based on the transport properties in a microfluidic flow with spatially variable vorticity. Because of their size the thermal fluctuating motion of the molecules must be taken into account. These fluctuations play a decisive role in the proposed separation mechanism.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0506084,
title = {Chiral separation in microflows},
author = {Marcin Kostur and Michael Schindler and Peter Talkner and Peter Hänggi},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0506084},
year = {2009}
}