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Updated: Sep 24, 2025

Engineering Molecular Recognition with Bio-mimetic Polymers on Single Walled Carbon Nanotubes
Published on: January 10, 2017
Investigation on the chirality mechanism of chiral carbon quantum dots derived from tryptophan
Yingying Wei1,2, Lin Chen2,3, Junli Wang2,3
1College of Materials Science and Engineering, Taiyuan University of Technology Taiyuan 030024 China Liuxuguang@tyut.edu.cn.
Abstract:
Chiral carbon quantum dots (CQDs) with chirality, fluorescence and biocompatibility were synthesized by a one-step method with l-/d-tryptophan (l-/d-Trp), as both carbon source and chiral source. Levogyration-/dextrorotation-CQDs (l-/d-CQDs) were characterized by transmission electron microscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectrometry, ultraviolet-visible absorption, excitation and emission spectrometry and circular dichroism (CD) spectrometry. Results show that l-CQDs and d-CQDs present similar spherical morphology, functional groups and optical properties. The CD signal, around 220, 240 and 290 nm are opposite and symmetric, which conclusively demonstrates that l-CQDs and d-CQDs are enantiomers. Besides the CD signal around 220 nm from the inheritance of l-/d-Trp, two new chiral signals around 240 and 290 nm were induced by chiral environment.
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