Nanotechnology Now - Press Release: Liquid crystal templated chiral nanomaterials

Chirality is omnipresent in living organisms and nature. Chiral architectures can be found at a variety of hierarchical levels, ranging from atomic, molecular to supramolecular, macroscopic, and galactic scales. However, chirality at a molecular scale is inherently weak, and extending the chirality from molecules to nanomaterials could bring many new opportunities for the design and synthesis of emerging chiral functional nanomaterials with a remarkable improvement in chiroptical properties. Chiral nanomaterials can be realized from directed self-assembly of nanoscale achiral functional building blocks using various chiral soft templates such as DNA, peptide and protein, liquid crystal (LC), chiral polymer, and organogelators. Among the different chiral soft templates, liquid-crystalline soft templates are highly attractive due to their inherent long-range ordered molecular assemblies that couple liquid fluidity with crystal ordering from molecular to macroscopic hierarchical levels. Recently, many researchers have devoted themselves to the design and synthesis of advanced chiral functional nanomaterials using liquid crystalline soft templates. Benefiting from chiral self-assembly feature of diverse chiral liquid-crystalline phases, it is possible to transfer their chirality and periodicity into functional nanomaterials with unique and unprecedented functionalities.