Synthesis of chiral carbosilane dendrimers with l-cysteine and N-acetyl-l-cysteine on their surface and their application as chiral selectors for enantiomer separation by capillary electrophoresis

The synthesis of chiral carbosilane dendrimers functionalized with cysteine and N-acetylcysteine groups is presented. These dendrimers were obtained through thiol–ene addition reactions and their application as chiral selectors in capillary electrophoresis was investigated. Four drugs used as model compounds were analyzed under different experimental conditions observing that the use of a first generation dendrimer containing 4 terminal N-acetyl-l-cysteine groups enabled the enantiomeric discrimination of razoxane with a discrimination power similar to that obtained with other powerful chiral selectors such as cyclodextrins.