Asymmetric molecular adsorption and regioselective bond cleavage on chiral PdGa crystals

Homogenous enantioselective catalysis is nowadays the cornerstone in the manufacturing of enantiopure substances, but its technological implementation suffers from well-known impediments like the lack of endurable catalysts exhibiting long-term stability. The catalytically active intermetallic compound Palladium-Gallium (PdGa), conserving innate bulk chirality on its surfaces, represent a promising system to study asymmetric chemical reactions by heterogeneous catalysis, with prospective relevance for industrial processes. In a recent publication we investigate the adsorption of 10,10′-dibromo-9,9′-bianthracene (DBBA) on the PdGa:A(-1-1-1) Pd3-terminated surface by means of scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and spectroscopy (STS). A highly enantioselective adsorption of the molecule evolving into a near 100% enantiomeric excess below room temperature is observed. This exceptionally high enantiomeric excess is attributed to temperature activated conversion of the S to the R chiral conformer. Tip-induced bond cleavage of the R conformer shows a very high regioselectivity of the DBBA debromination. The experimental results are interpreted by density functional theory atomistic simulations. This work extends the knowledge of chirality transfer onto the enantioselective adsorption of non-planar molecules and manifests the ensemble effect of PdGa surfaces resulting in robust regioselective debromination. This record contains data that support the results discussed in the manuscript.

Identifier
Source https://archive.materialscloud.org/record/2025.5
Metadata Access https://archive.materialscloud.org/xml?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_dc&identifier=oai:materialscloud.org:2203
Provenance
Creator Merino-Diez, Nestor; Amador, Raymond; Stolz, Samuel T.; Passerone, Daniele; Widmer, Roland; Gröning, Oliver
Publisher Materials Cloud
Publication Year 2025
Rights info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess; Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode
OpenAccess true
Contact archive(at)materialscloud.org
Representation
Language English
Resource Type Dataset
Discipline Materials Science and Engineering