Advances in chiral nanozymes: a review

Nanomaterials with intrinsic enzymatic activity are often referred to as nanozymes. They exhibit many advantages over natural enzymes such as temporal and thermal stability, recyclability, controllable activity, and ease of large-scale preparation. Many efforts have been made in the past 5 years in order to improve their specificity for chiral substrates. This review (with 74 refs.) summarizes the state of the art in the design of nanozymes with chiral selectivity. Following an introduction into nanozymes and chiral selectivity in general, a first large section covers nanozymes based on the use of chiral chemicals. The next two sections describe nanozymes using amino acids and DNA as chiral ligands. A table summarizes the kinetic and selectivity parameters of the currently known chiral enzyme mimics. A concluding section addresses current challenges, and gives perspectives and an outlook on trends. Graphical abstract Chiral nanozymes exhibit the ability of asymmetric catalysis and enantioselective discrimination by modifying with chiral ligands.