Amino-acid- and peptide-directed synthesis of chiral plasmonic gold nanoparticles

Abstract

Understanding chirality, or handedness, in molecules is important because of the enantioselectivity that is observed in many biochemical reactions¹, and because of the recent development of chiral metamaterials with exceptional light-manipulating capabilities, such as polarization control^2,3,4, a negative refractive index⁵ and chiral sensing⁶. Chiral nanostructures have been produced using nanofabrication techniques such as lithography⁷ and molecular self-assembly^8,9,10,11, but large-scale and simple fabrication methods for three-dimensional chiral structures remain a challenge. In this regard, chirality transfer represents a simpler and more efficient method for controlling chiral morphology^{12,13,14,15,16,<a data-track="click"...}