SinoXivNano-Confinement-Directed Crystallization of Morphochiral Gold Nanohelices with Kinetically Programmable Geometry
Abstract
The bottom-up synthesis of three-dimensional chiral metallic nanostructures without molecular chiral ligands remains a fundamental challenge. Here we report a template-confined, ligand-free strategy producing intrinsically morphochiral gold nanoparticles (GNPs) and nanohelices (GNHs) by AuCl₄⁻ reduction within rigid silica nanohelical nanocavities. Reductant choice selects the operative kinetic regime — charge-transfer-limited or diffusion-limited — yielding discrete GNPs or continuous GNHs, respectively. Under diffusion-limited conditions, crystallographic twinning redirects growth along the cavity, encoding chirality into the metal lattice. Pitch and diameter are template-fixed; helix length is kinetically controlled, decoupling these parameters and making helix length the sole tunable variable. The dissymmetry factor (g) scales sigmoidally with aspect ratio, programmable from ~10⁻³ to ~0.2 across two orders of magnitude. Electron tomography and simulations confirm morphology-intrinsic chiroptical activity persisting after template removal. This work establishes kinetic regime selection under nanoscale confinement as a general synthetic principle for programming three-dimensional chirality in metals.
Citation Information
@article{reikooda2026,
title={Nano-Confinement-Directed Crystallization of Morphochiral Gold Nanohelices with Kinetically Programmable Geometry},
author={Reiko Oda and Zakaria Anfar and Masahiro Nakaya and Wijak Yospanya and Simon Poly and Yann Battie and Yutaka Okazaki and Walid Baaziz and Ovidiu Ersen and David Talaga and Thierry Buffeteau and Matthias Pauly and Nanami Hano and Marco Bertuolo and Pamela DE LA FUENTE and Sylvain Nlate and Emilie Pouget and Kuniaki Murase and Kazuhiro Fukami},
journal={Nature Portfolio},
year={2026},
doi={https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-9308726/v1}
}
