Molecular chirality is significantly important for drug synthesis, material design, and other life activities. Thus, developing an efficient, convenient, and rapid technique for chiral recognition is of great industrial and physiological significance. Here, we demonstrate an electrochemical method for the sensitive real-time recognition of chiral molecules by using high-density chiral nanochannels. The chiral porphyrins direct the self-assembly of porphyrin-cored star homopolymers (p-HP) into ordered helical porphyrin arrays, providing chiral-selective nanochannels with enantioselective recognition capabilities. This well-defined assembly enables dual functionality of osmotic energy conversion and chiral molecule recognition, which is combined with a self-powered nanosensor for chiral molecule recognition. This work bridges the gap between molecular chirality and macroscopic membrane engineering, offering a sustainable platform for convenient chiral molecule recognition.
Yang et al. (Wed,) studied this question.