Mesoscale CdTe helices with near-unity enantiomeric excess offer insight into design rules for chiroptical semiconductor materials.

Photon-to-matter chirality transfer offers both simplicity and universality to chiral synthesis but its efficiency is typically low for organic compounds. New pathways for imposing chiral bias during chemical process are essential for a variety of technologies from medicine to informatics as well as for fundamental science. Strong optical activity of inorganic nanoparticles (NPs) afford photosynthetic routes to chiral superstructures using circularly polarized photons. Plasmonic NPs are especially promising candidates for such reactions but realization and adequate interpretation of light-driven synthesis of chiral nanostructures in light-driven processes was more challenging than for semiconductor NPs. The process also requires unconventional approaches for the quantification of chiral products. Here we show that illumination of nanoscale colloidal dispersions with circularly polarized light induces the formation of chiral nanostructures 10-15 nm in diameter. Despite their seemingly irregular shape, the resulting nanocolloids showed circular dichroism (CD) spectra with opposite polarity after exposure to photons with left-and right circular polarization. The sign and spectral position of the experimental CD peaks of

Nacre-like composites have been investigated typically in the form of coatings or free-standing sheets. They demonstrated remarkable mechanical properties and are used as ultrastrong materials but macroscale fibres with nacre-like organization can improve mechanical properties even further. The fiber form or nacre can, simplify manufacturing and offer new functional properties unknown yet for other forms of biomimetic materials. Here we demonstrate that nacre-like fibres can be produced by shear-induced self-assembly of nanoplatelets. The synergy between two structural motifs—nanoscale brick-and-mortar stacking of platelets and microscale twisting of the fibres—gives rise to high stretchability (>400%) and gravimetric toughness (640 J g−1). These unique mechanical properties originate from the multiscale deformation regime involving solid-state self-organization processes that lead to efficient energy dissipation. Incorporating luminescent CdTe nanowires into these fibres imparts the new property of mechanically tunable circularly polarized luminescence. The nacre-like fibres open a novel technological space for optomechanics of biomimetic composites, while their continuous spinning methodology makes scalable production realistic.

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