As early as 1992, proline was examined as a potential
chiral selector
for high-performance liquid chromatography. In recent years, brush-type
selectors with up to 10 proline units have been examined, and the
longer peptides were found to be competitive with commercial chiral
stationary phases (CSPs). In this article, we report on a comprehensive
examination of a t-butoxycarbonyl- (t-Boc-) terminated monoproline selector. This selector was grafted
through an amide linkage to an aminopropyl siloxane-terminated Si(111)
wafer and to a silicon atomic force microscopy tip. Chemical force
spectrometry measurements were performed for interaction forces between
two d- or l-monoproline monolayers in water and
in the presence of various amino acid solutions. When exposed to amino
acids, the adhesion forces measured between the proline layers were
reduced. Amino acids containing hydrophilic side chains were found
to exhibit a selectivity opposite to that seen for those containing
hydrophobic side chains. Molecular dynamics simulations of the monoproline
interfaces in the presence of racemic alanine and serine identified
the importance of hydrogen-bonding interactions between the amino
acids and the monoproline selectors. We found that, when amino acids
are bound to the proline selector, their side chains protrude into
the bulk solution, explaining the strong impact of side-chain hydrophobicity
on the selectivity. Taken together, the experiments and simulations
show that hydrogen-bonding interactions are key to effective chiral
discrimination for proline-based CSPs.