Branzi Lorenzo, Lavet Oriane, Gun'ko Yurii K
School of Chemistry, CRANN and AMBER Research Centres, Trinity College Dublin, College Green, Dublin 2, Ireland.
Chemistry Department, University of Clermont Auvergne, Antenne du Puy en Velay, 43009 Le Puy en Velay Cedex, France.
Nanoscale. 2023 Nov 30;15(46):18753-18761. doi: 10.1039/d3nr04320g.
Chiral inorganic nanostructures have attracted a lot of attention over the last few years. Here we report the first observation of chirality in indium sulfide nanoparticles, which have been produced by a co-precipitation reaction in the presence of cysteine as a chiral agent. The process resulted in the production of spherical nanoparticles with an average diameter of around 3.6 nm. Circular dichroism spectroscopy of the nanoparticles showed an intense chiroptical signal corresponding to the indium sulfide excitonic transition, confirming the successful transfer of chirality to the InS inorganic matrix. Nuclear magnetic resonance analysis of a colloidal solution of the nanoparticles demonstrated critical evidence of chemisorption of the chiral ligand on the surface of the nanoparticles and revealed a characteristic fast chemical exchange between the ligand chemisorbed on the surface of the nanoparticles and the free ligand in solution. Finally, the effect of the chiral ligand's structure on the transfer of chirality was investigated, with consideration of other amino acid ligands, and the critical role of the thiolate group in the optimisation of the chiral transfer was observed. This research is expected to stimulate further development and applications of new chiral semiconductor nanomaterials.
在过去几年中，手性无机纳米结构引起了广泛关注。在此，我们报告了首次在硫化铟纳米颗粒中观察到手性，这些纳米颗粒是在作为手性剂的半胱氨酸存在下通过共沉淀反应制备的。该过程产生了平均直径约为3.6纳米的球形纳米颗粒。纳米颗粒的圆二色光谱显示出对应于硫化铟激子跃迁的强烈手性光学信号，证实了手性成功转移到InS无机基质中。纳米颗粒胶体溶液的核磁共振分析证明了手性配体在纳米颗粒表面化学吸附的关键证据，并揭示了吸附在纳米颗粒表面的配体与溶液中游离配体之间的特征性快速化学交换。最后，考虑其他氨基酸配体，研究了手性配体结构对手性转移的影响，并观察到硫醇盐基团在优化手性转移中的关键作用。预计这项研究将刺激新型手性半导体纳米材料的进一步开发和应用。
