Self-organization of lactates in the gas phase
Abstract
Chiral recognition and subsequent selective self-organisation into hydrogen-bonded n-mers is observed in supersonic methyl lactate expansions. The νOH and νCO-vibrations are investigated by ragout-jet FTIR-spectroscopy and lead to the assignment of homo- and heterochiral clusters of at least three different cluster sizes. Whereas homo- and heterochiral dimers are formed in similar amounts in the racemic mixture, prominent absorptions due to different homochiral and heterochiral lactate trimers and tetramers indicate highly specific chiral self-recognition beyond molecular pairs. Chemical modification of the ester-group (