Inorganic Chiral Hybrid Nanostructures for Tailored Chiroptics and Chirality‐Dependent Photocatalysis

• Published in: Angewandte Chemie International Edition Vol. 61; no. 24; pp. e202112400 - n/a
• Main Authors: Tan, Lili, Yu, Shang‐Jie, Jin, Yiran, Li, Jiaming, Wang, Peng‐peng
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Germany Wiley Subscription Services, Inc 13.06.2022
• Edition: International ed. in English
• Subjects: Chirality; Chirality-Dependent Photocatalysis; Chiroptical Activity; Circular polarization; Handedness; Heterostructures; Hydrogen production; Metal-Semiconductor Hetero-nanostructures; Nanomaterials; Nanoparticles; Nanostructure; Nanotechnology; Photocatalysis; Polarized light; Chirality-Dependent Photocatalysis; Nanomaterials; Metal-Semiconductor Hetero-nanostructures; Chirality; Chiroptical Activity
• ISSN: 1433-7851; 1521-3773
• DOI: 10.1002/anie.202112400

Inorganic chiral hybrid nanostructures that embed chirality within distinct material compositions can create novel chiral properties and functionalities absent from achiral nanostructures; however, they remain largely unexplored. We report, for the first time, a class of chiral plasmonic metal‐semiconductor core‐shell nanostructures that employ structurally chiral nanoparticles as chirality inducing templates to grow functional shell materials, which allowed us to independently control material parameters such as core geometry and shell thickness, as well as handedness of the system. We experimentally and theoretically achieved enhanced and tunable chiroptical activity of the heterostructures as a result of the core‐shell strong coupling effect. As a proof‐of‐concept demonstration, we demonstrate that the chiral hybrid nanostructures can drive chirality‐dependent photocatalytic hydrogen generation under circularly polarized light. This study enables rational design and functionalization of chiral hybrid nanomaterials towards enhanced chiral light–matter interactions and chiral device applications. A novel class of chiral hybrid nanostructures comprising chiral plasmonic nanoparticles and functional semiconductors are constructed via a general synthesis. The obtained hybrids show new and tunable chiroptical activity, and exhibit chirality‐dependent photocatalytic performance of water splitting under circularly polarized light, paving the way for complex chiral nanostructures and new chiral light–matter interactions.