Preparation and Enantiospecific Binding of Chiral Polyelectrolyte Multilayers: An In‐Situ ATR‐FTIR Study

Summary: Two chiral polyelectrolyte multilayers (PEM) composed of poly(L‐lysine) (PLL) and poly(vinylsulfate) (PVS) as well as poly(ethyleneimine‐maltose) (PEI‐m) and poly(vinylsulfate) and a nonchiral PEM composed of poly(ethyleneimine) (PEI) and poly(vinylsulfate) were deposited on a silica surface using the layer by layer method. For both PEM enantiospecific interaction towards one enantiomer of either L‐/D‐ glutamic acid (L‐/D‐GLU) or L‐/D‐ascorbic acid (L‐/D‐ASC), respectively, was checked under variation of the concentration. Both deposition and enantiospecific interaction were studied by attenuated total reflection Fourier transform (ATR‐FTIR) spectroscopy. Preliminary results show a significant enantiospecific preference of D‐ GLU over L‐GLU at PEM of PLL/PVS and of D‐ASC over L‐ASC at PEM of PEI‐m/PVS and no such preference for nonchiral PEM of PEI/PVS. PEM of PLL/PVS shows higher enantiospecifity with increasing L‐/D‐GLU concentration.