ABSTRACT
Chirality is a concept well known to organic chemists and to all chemists concerned in any way with structure. The geometric property that is responsible for the nonidentity of an object with its mirror image is called chirality. Stereospecific solid-state chemical reactions of chiral crystals formed by achiral materials are defined as ‘‘absolute’’ asymmetric synthesis. The major drawbacks of the crystal-field method, which prevent it from becoming a general method for absolute asymmetric synthesis, are the unpredictability of the crystallization of the achiral substrate, which as indicated can be circumvented by manual seeding, and the fact that achiral substrates seldom crystallize in chiral space groups. It was shown that it is possible to regulate this chiral crystallization by crystal engineering. A large quantity of chiral crystals of the thiocarbamate was prepared selectively and in bulk by seeding with a small amount of the chiral crystals during recrystallization.
