Gas‐Phase Enantiodifferentiation of Chiral Molecules: Chiral Recognition of 1‐Phenyl‐1‐propanol/2‐Butanol Clusters by Resonance Enhanced Multiphoton Ionization Spectroscopy

Abstract

A combination of high‐resolution spectroscopy and time‐of‐flight mass spectrometry was used for the first time to study the fundamental properties of supersonically expanded van der Waals complexes between ( R )‐(+)‐1‐phneyl‐1‐propanol ( P R ) and the enantiomers of 2‐butanol ( B R or B S ) at the microscopic level. Chiral discrimination is based on the different fragmentation patterns of P R B R and P R B S or on the different bathochromic shift of their electronic band origin relative to that of pure P R .