Zahra Rafiee - Department of Chemistry, Yasouj University, Yasouj 75914-353, I. R. Iran.
Shadpour Mallakpour - Organic Polymer Chemistry Research Laboratory, Department of Chemistry, Isfahan University of Technology, Isfahan, 84156-83111, I. R. Iran.

Chiral phenomena play important roles in nature. Most of the natural polymers such as polysaccharides and proteins are optically active. Amino acids are among the simplestbiomolecules that contain intramolecular hydrogen bonds and they serve as building blocks of more complex peptides andproteins. Amino acid based synthetic polymers are also expected to show biocompatibility and biodegradability similar to those of polypeptides [1]. Among the syntheticpolyamides, only those containing the naturally occurring (L)- amino acids, being structurally close to the naturalpolypeptides, possess potentially degradable linkages that make them suitable as biomaterials [2,3]. The synthesis of polymers containing amino acids is a subject of much interest,since a high degree of amino acid functionality can lead to polymers with increased solubility and the ability to formsecondary structures [4,5]. Possible applications of amino acid based polymers include chiral recognition [6], catalysis [7], liquid crystals [8], biomedical devices [9], and nonlinear optics [10]. These applications have created more effort to improve different synthetic procedures of optically active polymers.