Crystalline state photochemical asymmetric synthesis

In principle, any of the photoproducts shown in Table 4 could have been prepared in enantiomerically pure form by irradiating their achiral precursors in solution to form a racemate and then separating the enantiomers by means of the classical Pasteur resolution procedure [36]. This sequence is shown in the lower half of Fig. 3. The top half of Fig. 3 depicts the steps involved in the solid-state ionic chiral auxiliary method of asymmetric synthesis. The difference between this approach and the Pasteur method is one of timing. In the ionic chiral auxiliary method, salt formation between the achiral reactant and an optically pure amine precedes the photochemical step, whereas in the Pasteur procedure, the photochemical step comes first and is followed by treatment of the racemate with an optically pure amine to form a pair of diastereomeric salts. The two methods are similar in that the crystalline state is crucial to their success. The Pasteur resolution procedure relies on fractional crystallization for the separation of the diastereomeric salts, and the ionic chiral auxiliary approach only gives good ees when the photochemistry is carried out in the crystalline state. 

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