Abstract

    Bionic control over the assembly of achiral molecules into chiral supramolecular architectures is challenging, and typically relies on preexisting templates. We demonstrated that anthracene monomers could self-assemble into polyanthracene (PA) nanofibers with well-defined left-handed helical nanoarchitectures under well-controlled conditions. The spontaneous formation of supramolecular helices might be ascribed to the steric constraints imposed by dehydrocyclization carried out at the 4,8 sites of the benzene ring of the anthracene monomer. Furthermore, high quality, few-layer graphene, derived from the chiral helical PA nanofibers, provided promising prospects and new ideas for functional materials synthesis and chirality amplification.

Full Article：http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/asp/me/2016/00000006/00000001/art00012