Cryogenic Synthesis of Homochiral Gold Nanoparticles in the Absence of Chiral Ligands and Their Performance in Enantiomer Recognition.

Authors

Qingyuan Liu, Miao Zhang, Chenxin Sun, Chunli Xu, Baoxin Li

Published in

Inorganic chemistry. Jun 12, 2025. Epub Jun 12, 2025.

Abstract

Currently, the chiral ligand-directed growth strategy has been predominantly employed for preparing chiral gold nanoparticles (AuNPs). In this work, we report the unexpected discovery of homochiral AuNP formation under cryogenic conditions (0 °C) without chiral ligand induction. Systematic investigations revealed significant temperature-dependent evolution of nanoparticle morphology and chiroptical properties across a broad thermal range (-10 to 75 °C). Notably, AuNPs synthesized at 0 °C exhibited a 4.2-fold enhancement in the extinction dissymmetry factor (g-factor) compared to those prepared at 60 °C. We propose a temperature-modulated crystallization mechanism governing chiral symmetry breaking during nanoparticle growth. The 0 °C-synthesized chiral AuNPs demonstrated exceptional enantioselective recognition capabilities, particularly as colorimetric probes for glutamine (Gln) enantiomer discrimination. This work developed a chiral ligand-free synthesis method for chiral AuNPs. Our findings establish temperature engineering as a crucial parameter for controlling nanoscale chirality and open new avenues for designing chiral plasmonic materials.

PMID:
40506372
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 13 Jun 2025.

Read full publication at:
Please sign in to see all details.

Stats

1-terrible, 9-excellent. How would you rate this publication? Sign in in to submit your rating.

Post a comment

You need to be signed in to post comments. You can sign in here.

Comments

There are no comments yet.