Praseodymium Metallacrown-Based NMR Probe for Enantioselective Discrimination of Mandelate Anions in Water.

Recently, the enhanced interest in water-soluble aminohydroximate Ln(III)-Cu(II) metallacrowns (MC) is largely due to their fascinating structural chemistry, diverse properties and ease of synthesis. We examined the water-soluble praseodymium(III) alaninehydroximate complex Pr(H2O)4[15-MCCu(II)Alaha-5]·3Cl (1) as a highly effective chiral lanthanide shift reagent for NMR analysis of the biologically relevant (R/S)-mandelate (MA) anions in aqueous media. The R-MA and S-MA enantiomers can be easily discriminated in the presence of small (1.2-6.2 mol %) amounts of MC 1 by the 1H NMR signals of multiple protons exhibiting an enantiomeric shift difference (ΔΔδ) of 0.06 ppm up to 0.31 ppm. Additionally, a possibility of coordination of MA to the metallacrown was investigated by the ESI-MS technique and a Density Functional Theory modeling of the molecular electrostatic potential and noncovalent interactions.