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Chirality and Excited State Proton Transfer: From Sensing to Asymmetric Synthesis
Author(s) -
Posey Victoria,
Hanson Kenneth
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
chemphotochem
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.13
H-Index - 18
ISSN - 2367-0932
DOI - 10.1002/cptc.201900097
Subject(s) - photoisomerization , chirality (physics) , excited state , molecule , enantioselective synthesis , proton , chemistry , photochemistry , fluorescence , electron transfer , chemical physics , computational chemistry , isomerization , atomic physics , physics , organic chemistry , catalysis , quantum mechanics , chiral symmetry breaking , nambu–jona lasinio model , quark
Excited state proton transfer (ESPT) is a unique photochemical process where the electron density shift of a molecule in the excited state dramatically decreases the p K a value of a proton donor site. A majority of ESPT research to date has focused on achiral molecules but there is growing interest in understanding/harnessing ESPT to/from chiral molecules. This review summarizes and critically examines the literature to date describing the role of ESPT in enantioselective fluorescence sensing, asymmetric synthetic organic chemistry, and photoisomerization of chiral molecules. Our goal is to show that despite ESPT of chiral molecules being a relatively new pursuit, there has been significant progress and even greater potential for ESPT in these and other applications yet to be realized.