TY - JOUR
T1 - Emergence of chirality and structural complexity in single crystals at the molecular and morphological levels
AU - di Gregorio, Maria Chiara
AU - Shimon, Linda J.W.
AU - Brumfeld, Vlad
AU - Houben, Lothar
AU - Lahav, Michal
AU - van der Boom, Milko E.
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was supported by the Irving and Cherna Moskowitz Center for Nano and Bioimaging at the Weizmann Institute of Science, the Israel Science Foundation (ISF), Minerva Foundation, Weizmann-Yale collaborative program, and the Helen and Martin Kimmel Center for Molecular Design. Dr. I. Pinkas and Dr. E. Shimoni are acknowledged for carrying out Raman measurements and microtome slicing of the crystals, respectively.
PY - 2020/12/1
Y1 - 2020/12/1
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
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U2 - 10.1038/s41467-019-13925-5
DO - 10.1038/s41467-019-13925-5
M3 - Article
C2 - 31959750
AN - SCOPUS:85078302328
VL - 11
JO - Nature Communications
JF - Nature Communications
SN - 2041-1723
IS - 1
M1 - 380
ER -