Chiral molecules are stereoselective with regard to specific biological functions. Enantiomers differ considerably in their physiological reactions with the human body. Safeguarding the quality and safety of drugs requires an efficient analytical platform by which to selectively probe chiral compounds to ensure the extraction of single enantiomers. Asymmetric synthesis is a mature approach to the production of single enantiomers; however, it is poorly suited to mass production and allows for only specific enantioselective reactions. Furthermore, it is too expensive and time-consuming for the evaluation of therapeutic drugs in the early stages of development. These limitations have prompted the development of surface-modified nanoparticles using amino acids, chiral organic ligands, or functional groups as chiral selectors applicable to a racemic mixture of chiral molecules. The fact that these combinations can be optimized in terms of sensitivity, specificity, and enantioselectivity makes them ideal for enantiomeric recognition and separation. In chiral resolution, molecules bond selectively to particle surfaces according to homochiral interactions, whereupon an enantiopure compound is extracted from the solution through a simple filtration process. In this review article, we discuss the fabrication of chiral nanoparticles and look at the ways their distinctive surface properties have been adopted in enantiomeric recognition and separation.

The electromagnetic radiation scattering patterns were computed using an improved C program to study variations in the patterns with changes in the size distribution, size parameters and refractive index of small particles in a volume element. The particle size distributions considered were gamma, normal and lognormal. The program is stable for computation of the theoretical values of the non-zero elements of the scattering matrix, efficiency factors, single scattering albedo, radiation pressure and asymmetry parameter for particles ranging from very small to very large size parameters. One of the significant features of the program is that it incorporates two methods for the determination of the optimal number of terms required for the computation of Mie series with the added benefit of having the option of either going for computational speed or accuracy. After a comparison of the C program with other reported benchmark results, it has been found that the program is very accurate and reliable for electromagnetic scattering computations.