Synthetic helical polymers: An overview on synthesis and their chiral separation efficiency

Chiral stationary phases (CSPs) derived from synthetic helical polymers showed efficient resolution towards a wide range of racemates. Hence, synthesizing various effective stereoregular helical polymers has attracted a great deal of attention. In helical polymer, the highly ordered structure with its preferred handed helical conformation plays a key role during enatioseparation. Moreover, two types of helical polymers such as static and dynamic/stimuli-responsive helical polymers were majorly studied for chiral resolution. The synthetic approach plays a significant role in forming these helical polymers. Including this, the dynamic helical polymers are very much sensitive to both external and internal stimuli, resulting changes in helical handedness as well as helical pitch. The separation efficiency of helical polymers varies depending on its helical conformations, pendant groups, molecular weights, coating solvents, and chiroptical properties. This present review mainly focuses on the progress of different synthetic approaches for getting synthetic helical polymers, and their applications for enatioseparation as CSPs in liquid chromatography.