Assembly of Luminescent Chiral Gold(I)‐Sulfido Clusters via Chiral Self‐Sorting
Liao‐Yuan Yao, Lin Qin, Ziyong Chen, Jonathan Lam, Vivian Wing‐Wah Yam
Abstract
Abstract Due to the ubiquity of chirality in nature, chiral self‐assembly involving self‐sorting behaviors has remained as one of the most important research topics of interests. Herein, starting from a racemic mixture of SEG‐based (SEG=SEGPHOS) chlorogold(I) precursors, a unique chiral butterfly‐shape hexadecanuclear gold(I) cluster (Au 16 ) with different ratios of R SEG and S SEG ligands is obtained via homoleptic and heterochiral self‐sorting. More interestingly, by employing different chlorogold(I) precursors of opposite chirality (such as R SEG ‐Au 2 and S BIN ‐Au 2 (BIN=BINAP)), an unprecedented heteroleptic and heterochiral self‐sorting strategy has been developed to give a series of heteroleptic chiral decanuclear gold(I) clusters (Au 10 ) with propellor‐shape structures. Heterochiral and heteroleptic self‐sorting have also been observed between enantiomers of homoleptic chiral Au 10 clusters to result in the heteroleptic chiral Au 10 clusters via cluster‐to‐cluster transformation. Incorporation of heteroleptic ligands is found to decrease the symmetry from S 4 of homoleptic meso Au 10 to C 2 of heteroleptic chiral Au 10 clusters. The chirality has been transferred from the axial chiral ligands and stored in the heteroleptic gold(I) clusters.