Chiral Separation Principles: An Introduction

The development of methods for chiral separation on an analytical as well as on a preparative scale has attracted great attention during the past two decades. Chromatographic methods such as gas chromatography (GC) (1 ), high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) (2 –6 ), supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) (7 –9 ), and thin-layer chromatography (TLC) (10 –13 ) have been developed using different chiral separation principles. More recently, capillary electrophoresis (CE) (14 –21 ) and capillary electrochromatography (CEC) (22 –25 ) have been shown to be powerful alternatives to chromatographic methods. Several separation principles successfully used in HPLC have been transferred to CE and CEC. For the separation of enantiomers on a preparative scale, LC has become increasingly attractive.