Enantioselective disruption of cellulose nanocrystal self-assembly into chiral nematic phases in D-alanine solutions

David Attia; Orit Mendelson; Yael Levi-Kalisman; Ronit Bitton; Rachel Yerushalmi-Rozen

doi:10.1039/d3nr03077f

Enantioselective disruption of cellulose nanocrystal self-assembly into chiral nematic phases in D-alanine solutions

Nanoscale. 2023 Nov 2;15(42):16890-16895. doi: 10.1039/d3nr03077f.

Authors

David Attia¹, Orit Mendelson^{1

2}, Yael Levi-Kalisman³, Ronit Bitton^{1

4}, Rachel Yerushalmi-Rozen^{1

4}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemical Engineering, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva 84105, Israel. rachely@bgu.ac.il.
² Nuclear Research Center-Negev, Department of Chemistry, Beer-Sheva 84190, Israel.
³ The Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, and the Institute of Life Sciences, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem 91904, Israel.
⁴ The Ilse Katz Institute for Nanoscience and Technology, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva 84105, Israel.

PMID: 37847510
DOI: 10.1039/d3nr03077f

Abstract

The chiral environment of enantiomerically pure D-alanine solutions is observed to disrupt and modify the entropy-driven assembly of cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) into a chiral nematic mesophase. The effect is specific to D-alanine and cannot be attributed to the adsorption of alanine molecules (neither D- nor L-alanine) onto the CNC particles.