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Updated: Jul 29, 2025

Seeded Synthesis of CdSe/CdS Rod and Tetrapod Nanocrystals
Published on: December 11, 2013
Transforming Silver Nanoclusters from Racemic to Homochiral via Seeded Crystallization
Along Ma1, Wenjun Du2, Jiawei Wang1
1College of Materials Science and Engineering, Qingdao University of Science and Technology, Qingdao, Shandong 266042, P. R. China.
Abstract:
Chirality has risen as an attractive topic in materials research in recent years, but the attainment of enantiopure materials remains a major challenge. Herein, we obtained homochiral nanoclusters by a recrystallization strategy, without any chiral factors (i.e., chiral ligands, counterions, etc.). Through the rapid flipping of configuration of silver nanoclusters in solution, the initial racemic Ag (triclinic) nanoclusters are converted to homochiral (orthorhombic) as revealed by X-ray crystallography. In the seeded crystallization, one homochiral Ag crystal is used as a seed to direct the growth of crystals with specific chirality. Furthermore, enantiopure Ag nanoclusters can be used as amplifiers for the detection of chiral carboxylic drugs. This work not only provides chiral conversion and amplification strategies to obtain homochiral nanoclusters but also explains the chirality origin of nanoclusters at the molecular level.
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