Investigation on the chirality mechanism of chiral carbon quantum dots derived from tryptophan

Yingying Wei; Lin Chen; Junli Wang; Xuguang Liu; Yongzhen Yang; Shiping Yu

doi:10.1039/c8ra09649j

Investigation on the chirality mechanism of chiral carbon quantum dots derived from tryptophan

RSC Adv. 2019 Jan 25;9(6):3208-3214. doi: 10.1039/c8ra09649j. eCollection 2019 Jan 22.

Authors

Yingying Wei^{1

2}, Lin Chen^{2

3}, Junli Wang^{2

3}, Xuguang Liu^{1

2}, Yongzhen Yang^{2

3}, Shiping Yu^{2

4}

Affiliations

¹ College of Materials Science and Engineering, Taiyuan University of Technology Taiyuan 030024 China Liuxuguang@tyut.edu.cn.
² Key Laboratory of Interface Science and Engineering in Advanced Materials, Taiyuan University of Technology, Ministry of Education Taiyuan 030024 China yyztyut@126.com.
³ Research Center of Advanced Materials Science and Technology, Taiyuan University of Technology Taiyuan 030024 China.
⁴ Interventional Treatment Department, Second Hospital of Shanxi Medical University Taiyuan 030001 China.

Abstract

Chiral carbon quantum dots (CQDs) with chirality, fluorescence and biocompatibility were synthesized by a one-step method with l-/d-tryptophan (l-/d-Trp), as both carbon source and chiral source. Levogyration-/dextrorotation-CQDs (l-/d-CQDs) were characterized by transmission electron microscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectrometry, ultraviolet-visible absorption, excitation and emission spectrometry and circular dichroism (CD) spectrometry. Results show that l-CQDs and d-CQDs present similar spherical morphology, functional groups and optical properties. The CD signal, around 220, 240 and 290 nm are opposite and symmetric, which conclusively demonstrates that l-CQDs and d-CQDs are enantiomers. Besides the CD signal around 220 nm from the inheritance of l-/d-Trp, two new chiral signals around 240 and 290 nm were induced by chiral environment.