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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
Packing Biomolecules into Sierpiński Triangles with Global Organizational Chirality
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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