Chiral template–induced porphyrin-based self-assembled materials for electrochemical chiral sensing

Abstract

Chirality plays a key role in many fields of natural sciences as well as life sciences. Chiral materials are widely developed and used for electrochemical chiral recognition. In recent years, carbon quantum dots (CQDs) have been widely used as a novel carbon nanomaterial due to their excellent charge transfer properties, good biocompatibility, and low cost. The special structure of π-conjugated porphyrin attracts attention. Supramolecular self-assembly shows a way to construct chiral materials by self-assembling simple molecules into chiral composites. Herein, we demonstrate the self-assembly of achiral porphyrins induced by chiral carbon quantum dots assembled from L- and or D-tryptophan (L- and or D-Trp) with carbon quantum dots, resulting in 5,10,15,20-tetrakis (4-carboxyPheyl) (TCPP) self-assembled structure. The electrochemical chiral recognition of chiral self-assembled materials was studied using Phenylalanine (Phe) enantiomer as a chiral analyte. Electrochemical chiral recognition results showed that the chiral self-assembled materials induced by chiral templates have a good ability to discriminate Phe enantiomers. Therefore, this research provides a new idea for the synthesis of chiral composites and further expands applications to electrochemical chiral recognition.