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Bioinspired chiral inorganic nanomaterials

Nature Reviews Bioengineering volume 1, pages 88–106 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

From small molecules to entire organisms, evolution has refined biological structures at the nanoscale, microscale and macroscale to be chiral—that is, mirror dissymmetric. Chirality results in biological, chemical and physical properties that can be influenced by circularly polarized electromagnetic fields. Chiral nanoscale materials can be designed that mimic, refine and advance biological chiral geometries, to engineer optical, physical and chemical properties for applications in photonics, sensing, catalysis and biomedicine. In this Review, we discuss the mechanisms underlying chirality transfer in nature and provide design principles for chiral nanomaterials. We highlight how chiral features emerge in inorganic materials during the chemical synthesis of chiral nanostructures, and outline key applications for inorganic chiral nanomaterials, including promising designs for biomedical applications, such as biosensing and immunomodulation. We conclude with an outlook to future opportunities and challenges, including the need for refined characterization techniques.

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Fig. 1: Chirality in biology.
Fig. 2: Chiral inorganic nanomaterials synthesized from enantioselective interaction.
Fig. 3: Chiral inorganic nanomaterials synthesized by templating of worm-like helical micelles.
Fig. 4: Photon and external field-induced chiral nanostructures.
Fig. 5: Applications of bioinspired chiral inorganic nanomaterials.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge support by the Creative Materials Discovery Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by Ministry of Science and ICT (NRF-2017M3D1A1039377), the LG Display under LGD-SNU Incubation Program, the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (MICIU) (Grant No. RTI2018-095844-B-I00), the Madrid Regional Government (Grant Nos. P2018/NMT-4389 and REACT ANTICIPA-UCM), the Office of Naval Research via Vannevar Bush DoD Fellowship to N.A.K. titled ‘Engineered Chiral Ceramics’ (ONR N000141812876), MURI N00014-20-1-2479 and COVID-19 Newton Award ‘Pathways to Complexity with “Imperfect” NPs’ (HQ00342010033). Part of this work was also supported by AFOSR FA9550-20-1-0265, Graph Theory Description of Network Material.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea

    Nam Heon Cho & Ki Tae Nam

  2. Departamento de Química Física, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    Andrés Guerrero-Martínez

  3. Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

    Jessica Ma & Nicholas A. Kotov

  4. Department of Materials Science, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

    Jessica Ma & Nicholas A. Kotov

  5. Biointerfaces Institute, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

    Jessica Ma & Nicholas A. Kotov

  6. Electron Microscopy for Materials Science (EMAT), University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium

    Sara Bals

  7. NANOlab Center of Excellence, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium

    Sara Bals

  8. CIC biomaGUNE, Basque Research and Technology Alliance (BRTA), Donostia-San Sebastián, Spain

    Luis M. Liz-Marzán

  9. Ikerbasque, Basque Foundation for Science, Bilbao, Spain

    Luis M. Liz-Marzán

  10. CINBIO, University of Vigo, Vigo, Spain

    Luis M. Liz-Marzán

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Contributions

N.H.C., J.M. and A.G.-M. wrote the manuscript and contributed equally. S.B. contributed a perspective on tomographic analysis of chiral nanomaterials. N.A.K., L.M.L.-M. and K.T.N. wrote the manuscript and guided all aspects of the work.

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Correspondence to Nicholas A. Kotov, Luis M. Liz-Marzán or Ki Tae Nam.

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Cho, N.H., Guerrero-Martínez, A., Ma, J. et al. Bioinspired chiral inorganic nanomaterials. Nat Rev Bioeng 1, 88–106 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44222-022-00014-4

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