Packing Biomolecules into Sierpiński Triangles with Global Organizational Chirality
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Updated: Oct 24, 2025

Self-assembling Morphologies Obtained from Helical Polycarbodiimide Copolymers and Their Triazole Derivatives
Published on: February 7, 2017
Chao Li1, Ruoning Li1, Zhen Xu1
1Key Laboratory for the Physics and Chemistry of Nanodevices and Center for Carbon-based Electronics, Department of Electronics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
Abstract:
Fractals are found in nature and play important roles in biological functions. However, it is challenging to controllably prepare biomolecule fractals. In this study, a series of Sierpiński triangles with global organizational chirality is successfully constructed by the coassembly of l-tryptophan and 1,3-bi(4-pyridyl)benzene molecules on Ag(111). The chirality is switched when replacing l-tryptophan by d-tryptophan. The fractal structures are characterized by low-temperature scanning tunneling microscopy at the single-molecule level. Density functional theory calculations reveal that intermolecular hydrogen bonds stabilize the Sierpiński triangles.
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