Probing Chiral Nanoparticles and Surfaces by Infrared Spectroscopy

Chiral metal surfaces and nanoparticles have the potential to be used for the selective production, the resolution and the detection of enantiomers of a chiral compound, which renders them highly attractive in view of the tremendous consequences of homochirality on earth. Their capability to disting...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inChimia Vol. 60; no. 11
Main Authors Cyrille Gautier, Marco Bieri, Igor Dolamic, Silvia Angeloni, Julien Boudon, Thomas Bürgi
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Swiss Chemical Society 01.11.2006
Subjects
Chiral surfaces
Enantiodiscrimination
Nanoparticles
Sams
Vibrational circular dichroism
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Summary:Chiral metal surfaces and nanoparticles have the potential to be used for the selective production, the resolution and the detection of enantiomers of a chiral compound, which renders them highly attractive in view of the tremendous consequences of homochirality on earth. Their capability to distinguish between enantiomers of a chemical compound relies on their structure and the ability to form intermolecular interactions. However, molecular-level understanding of the interactions that are at the origin of enantiodiscrimination is lagging behind due to the lack of powerful experimental techniques that are able to spot these interactions selectively with high sensitivity. In this article two techniques based on infrared spectroscopy are presented that are able to selectively target the chiral properties of nanoparticles and interfaces. These are the combination of attenuated total reflection infrared (ATR-IR) with modulation excitation spectroscopy (MES) to probe enantiodiscriminating interactions at chiral solid–liquid interfaces and vibrational circular dichroism (VCD), which is used to probe the structure of chirally modified metal nanoparticles.
ISSN:0009-4293
2673-2424
DOI:10.2533/chimia.2006.777