Organocatalytic chiral polymeric nanoparticles for asymmetric aldol reaction.

Chiral polymeric particles (CPPs) were studied extensively in recent years due to their importance in pharmaceutical applications. Here, nanosized CPPs were synthesized and applied as catalysts for direct asymmetric aldol reaction. The CPPs were prepared by miniemulsion or inverse miniemulsion based on various chiral amino acid derivatives and characterized by dynamic light scattering and scanning electron microscopy.

Synthesis of Poly(vitamin C) through ADMET.

l-Ascorbic acid, commonly known as vitamin C and one of the most important biological compounds, is converted to a α,ω-diene monomer and subsequently polymerized for the first time by acyclic diene metathesis. Various experimental conditions such as polymerization medium, catalyst type, temperature, and monomer/catalyst ratio are studied. The moderate molecular weight polymers are achieved when the polymerizations are conducted under bulk conditions employing the Grubbs first generation (G1) or Hoveyda-Grubbs second generation catalyst (HG-2).