The influence of achiral surfactants on synergistically chiral effect of interfacial nucleation, assembly orientation, and morphological evolution in chiral nanostructural synthesis via a chemical solution method is largely ignored and underexplored. Herein, we report a surfactant-mediated continuous evolution of chiral Cu2-xS (0 x 2+-cysteine coordination units, thereby directing their assembly pathway. In particular, in sodium dodecyl sulfate, the anionic headgroups electrostatically anchor coordination-derived nanoparticles, while the hydrophobic tails form a dense interfacial soft-template that directs nucleation and anisotropic growth of coordination nanosheets. Under the stereochemical control of chiral cysteine, these nanosheets undergo progressive intersheet tilting and hierarchical stacking, ultimately evolving into micrometer-scale TNBs. Catalytic oxidation of 3,4-dihydroxy-l/d-phenylalanine reveals that higher structural dimensionality and increased chiroptical response of Cu2-xS improve catalytic activity and enantioselectivity. This work demonstrates a surfactant-mediated interfacial soft-template strategy for the rational design of chiral inorganic materials and the translation of molecular asymmetry into continuously tunable micrometer-scale architectures for enantioselective catalysis.
Li et al. (Mon,) studied this question.