Emergence of chirality and structural complexity in single crystals at the molecular and morphological levels

Maria Chiara di Gregorio, Linda J. W. Shimon, Vlad Brumfeld, Lothar Houben, Michal Lahav () and Milko E. van der Boom ()
Additional contact information
Maria Chiara di Gregorio: Weizmann Institute of Science
Linda J. W. Shimon: Weizmann Institute of Science
Vlad Brumfeld: Weizmann Institute of Science
Lothar Houben: Weizmann Institute of Science
Michal Lahav: Weizmann Institute of Science
Milko E. van der Boom: Weizmann Institute of Science

Nature Communications, 2020, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract Naturally occurring single crystals having a multidomain morphology are a counterintuitive phenonomon: the macroscopic appearance is expected to follow the symmetry of the unit cell. Growing such crystals in the lab is a great challenge, especially from organic molecules. We achieve here uniform metallo-organic crystals that exhibit single crystallinity with apparently distinct domains and chirality. The chirality is present at both the molecular and macroscopic levels, although only achiral elements are used. “Yo-yo”-like structures having opposite helical handedness evolve from initially formed seemingly achiral cylinders. This non-polyhedral morphology coexists with a continuous coordination network forming homochiral channels. This work sheds light on the enigmatic aspects of fascinating crystallization processes occurring in biological mineralization. Our findings open up opportunities to generate new porous and hierarchical chiral materials.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-13925-5 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:11:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-019-13925-5

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-13925-5

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().