Convenient chirality transfer from organics to titania: construction and optical properties.

Polyethyleneimine (PEI) complexed with chiral d- (or l-) tartaric acid (tart) in water can self-organize into chiral and crystalline PEI/tart assemblies. It has been previously confirmed that the complexes of PEI/tart could work as catalytic/chiral templates to induce the deposition of SiO 2 nanofibres with optical activity but without outwards shape chirality such as helices. In this work, we found that the templating functions of PEI/tart were still effective to prompt the deposition of TiO 2 to form chiral PEI/tart@TiO 2 hybrid nanofibres under aqueous and room temperature conditions within two hours. Furthermore, the co-deposition of TiO 2 and SiO 2 was also fulfilled to yield chiral PEI/tart@TiO 2 /SiO 2 nanofibres. These TiO 2 -containing hybrid nanofibres showed non-helical shapes on the length scale; however, chiroptical signals with mirror relation around the UV-Vis absorption band of TiO 2 remarkably appeared on their circular dichroism (CD) spectra. By means of the protocols of XRD, TEM, SEM, UV-Vis, CD and XPS, structural features and thermoproperties of the chiral TiO 2 and SiO 2 /TiO 2 were investigated.