Abstract
Abstract Chirality is one of the most fascinating occurrences in the natural world and plays a crucial role in chemistry, biochemistry, pharmacology, and medicine. Chirality has also been envisaged to play an important role in nanotechnology and particularly in nanophotonics, therefore, chiral and chiroptical active nanoparticles (NPs) have attracted a lot of interest over recent years. Optical activity can be induced in NPs in several different ways, including via the direct interaction of achiral NPs with a chiral molecule. This results in circular dichroism (CD) in the region of the intrinsic absorption of the NPs. This interaction in turn affects the optical properties of the chiral molecule. Recently, studies of induced chirality in quantum dots (QDs) has deserved special attention and this phenomenon has been explored in detail in a number of important papers. In this article, we review these important recent advances in the preparation and formation of chiral molecule–QD systems and analyze the mechanisms of induced chirality, the factors influencing CD spectra shape and the intensity of the CD, as well as the effect of QDs on chiral molecules. We also consider potential applications of these types of chiroptical QDs including sensing, bioimaging, enantioselective synthesis, circularly polarized light emitters, and spintronic devices. Finally, we highlight the problems and possibilities that can arise in research areas concerning the interaction of QDs with chiral molecules and that a mutual influence approach must be taken into account particularly in areas, such as photonics, cell imaging, pharmacology, nanomedicine and nanotoxicology.
Highlights
Achiral molecule has two mirror-image forms, known as enantiomers, which are nonsuperimposable in threedimensional space [1]
The phenomenon of rotating the plane of polarized light is known as optical activity and can be directly studied using circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy [1], which is a technique of measurement of the difference in the absorption of left and right circularly polarized light (CPL) in optically active compounds
Over the last five years, many interesting studies have been focused on the field of induced optical activity, which has led to significant progress in understanding of the mechanisms of this phenomenon, with the influence of various factors on quantum dots (QDs) induced CD and CPL spectra having been investigated
Summary
Achiral molecule has two mirror-image forms, known as enantiomers, which are nonsuperimposable in threedimensional space [1]. The phenomenon of rotating the plane of polarized light is known as optical activity and can be directly studied using circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy [1], which is a technique of measurement of the difference in the absorption of left and right circularly polarized light (CPL) in optically active compounds Another crucial difference between enantiomers is the manner in which they interact with other chiral compounds. Over the last five years, many interesting studies have been focused on the field of induced optical activity, which has led to significant progress in understanding of the mechanisms of this phenomenon, with the influence of various factors on QD induced CD and CPL spectra having been investigated The majority of these investigations are devoted to spherical QDs, but there is an increased interest in chiral anisotropic NCs. Many possible options have been found to use LIC-QDs for different applications, including chiral sensing, asymmetric catalysis, circular polarized light emitters and spintronics. Biological media containing a multitude of various chiral molecules and interaction with drugs
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