Synthesis of chiral inorganic or hybrid nanomaterials through sol-gel transcription of chiral organic templates has attracted a great deal of interest for more than a decade. However, the chiral nature of these inorganic matrices has never been directly observed. For the first time, we report a direct evaluation of chirality on noncrystalline silica chiral nanoribbons by vibrational circular dichroism (VCD) measurements. Strong Cotton effect around 1150-1000 cm-1 from Si-O-Si asymmetric stretching vibration was observed. Surprisingly, calcination of these hybrid nanoribbons doubled the intensity of Cotton effects. On the basis of transmission electron microscopy observations, IR, VCD, NMR, and Raman spectroscopies, we demonstrate that the silica chirality originates from twisted siloxane network composed of chiral arrangement of the Si-O-Si bonds. Our findings clearly prove the presence of chiral organization of amorphous silica network, making them very promising chiral platforms for chiral recognition, optical applications, or asymmetric catalysis.
Keywords: Chiral nanostructures; VCD; chiral enhancement; chiral transcription; origin of inorganic chirality.