Mirror Image Nanostructures

摘要

Supramolecular organic nanostructures are formed through concerted weak interactions among self-assembling molecules.Hydrogen-bonding,pi-pi stacking,and metal-ligand interactions play central roles in controlling the form and function of these nanostructures,including one-dimensional assemblies with columnar,ribbon,and cylindrical architectures.Several groups have incorporated chiral moieties in self-assembling organic molecules with the objective of forming chiral supramolecular assemblies.In one case,a chiral assembly was mineralized with silica,transcribing the chirality of the molecule onto the inorganic nanostructure to create a catalyst that showed high enantioselec-tivity.Supramolecular nanostructures with appropriately sized cavities and well-defined chiral structure on the scale of their constituent molecules will enable the rational design of enantio-selective catalysts.We report here the use of enantiomerically enriched self-assembling molecules to create such one-dimensional nanostructures with well-defined chiral structure.