Chiral-chiral interactions as determining factors in gelation processes

The design of chiral materials represents an interesting field in chemistry and nanotechnology due to the multiple applications that they could access. In this context, chiral gels represent a feasible material concept and could be obtained by proper chiral precursors, giving the advantage to obtain chiral scaffolds readily employable as chiral media, sensors, catalysts and chiro-optics tools. In the wide panorama of chiral gels, studies are generally focused on hydro- or organogels where organic chiral gelators activate the gelation process in aqueous or organic liquid media. Apart from the widely employed organic molecules as gelators, organic salts resulted in high valuable supramolecular building blocks in the field. Consequently, the use of chiral organic salts could represent an interesting alternative, and advantageous strategy, to access chiral gel materials. With respect to organic medium, we focused on the less investigated Deep Eutectic Solvents (DES) that represent a greener alternative with interesting physico-chemical properties. In the context of chiral gels, this contribution would give first insights into the study of chiral eutectogels through the employment of chiral organic salts, composed of diimidazolium based cations and L- or D-tartrate anions. Moreover, chiral small molecules have been employed during the gelation process to study the effect on the supramolecular gel structure formation, the related properties, and the feasibility of obtaining multicomponent gels. Our results demonstrate how chiral-chiral interaction could be a useful tool to tune gel properties.