An Investigation of Chiral Recognition in Electrokinetic Chromatography by means of NMR Spectroscopy NMR spectroscopy was used to characterize the interactions between chiral β-blocker drugs and molecular micelles (MM) of varying hydrocarbon chain length. These MM are used to separate the optical isomers of drug molecules. Such separations are important because the optical isomers of many drugs have different physiologic properties. The interactions between the drugs and MM must be understood at the molecular level in order to design efficient drug separations. NMR diffusion experiments showed that differences in the optical isomer’s free energies of binding to the polymer, G), are positively correlated with chiral selectivities or  values from chromatography. This correlation shows that the optical isomers separate based upon differences in their free energies of binding to the MM. -blocker + MM -blocker:MM complex MM -blocker