Heterochiral Self‐Discrimination‐Driven Supramolecular Self‐Assembly of Decanuclear Gold(I)‐Sulfido Complexes into 2D Nanostructures with Chiral Anions‐Tuned Morphologies
Liao‐Yuan Yao, Zhen Chen, Kaka Zhang, Vivian Wing‐Wah Yam
Abstract
Abstract Chiral self‐recognition and self‐discrimination are of vital importance to biological processes. In this work, 2D regular rhombic nanocrystals ( RS ‐NC ) were fabricated through heterochiral self‐discrimination between chiral polynuclear gold(I)‐sulfido complex enantiomers, [( R ‐BINAP) 4 Au 10 S 4 ]Cl 2 ( R ‐Au 10 ) and [( S ‐BINAP) 4 Au 10 S 4 ]Cl 2 ( S ‐Au 10 ), in MeOH without the need for any surfactants or templates. The monitoring of nanocrystals (NCs) formation by TEM and DLS has uncovered the self‐assembly process and shape evolution of the NCs and revealed a screw‐dislocation dictated spiral growth of the rhombic NCs. Upon addition of chiral anions, the morphology of the gold NCs was found to change from rhombic to strip and quasi‐hexagonal nanosheets, arising from reverse and rotational layer‐by‐layer stacking to give the bilayer NCs. By applying a high temperature, rhombic gold nanoisland films were obtained from the rhombic NCs. The current study has provided a simple strategy towards the construction of regular geometric 2D NCs as well as their chiral anion‐tuned and reverse and rotational stacking‐determined morphology change by heterochiral self‐discrimination.