Journal of the American Chemical Society, Vol.132, No.51, 18045-18047, 2010
Doped Soap Membranes Selectively Permeate a Chiral Isomer
Soap films can not only be made with sub-mu m thickness, they can have intrinsic permeabilities comparable to many commercial membranes, permitting very high transmembrane flux. Soap films readily incorporate a wide range of modifiers to allow highly tailored selectivity: We show that incorporating alpha-cyclodextrin in an 890 nm thick Triton-X-100 film allows, in a single stage, a high degree of chirally selective transport (1.6:1) of alpha(+)-pinene over alpha(-)-pinene.