Chiral nanostructures self-assembled from nitrocinnamic amide amphiphiles: substituent and solvent effects

• Hejin Jiang,
• Huahua Fan,
• Yuqian Jiang,
• Li Zhang and
• Minghua Liu

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2019, 10, 1608–1617, doi:10.3762/bjnano.10.156

• different positions of the nitro group on the cinnamic amide. Moreover, it was found that the chiral sense of the self-assembled nanostructures can be regulated by the solvent whereby helicity inversion was observed. This work provides a simple way to regulate the self-assembly pathway via molecular design

• and choice of solvent for the controlled creation of chiral nanostructures. Keywords: chiral nanostructures; cinnamic acid; helicity inversion; nanoarchitectonics; self-assembly; Introduction The helical structure is widely found in biological systems and is considered to be a basic characteristic

• the other hand, helical architectures in many bimolecular systems have been shown to exhibit helicity inversion along with specific biofunctional transformations upon stimuli [28]. Thus, many attempts have been made towards understanding the reversal of handedness of helical biological systems. The