Growth of Hybrid Inorganic/Organic Chiral Thin Films by Sequenced Vapor Deposition.

One of the many challenges in the study of chiral nano-surfaces and nano-films is the design of accurate and controlled nanoscale films with enantioselective activity. Controlled design of chiral nano-films creates the opportunity to develop chiral materials with nano-structured architecture. Molecular layer deposition (MLD) is an advanced surface-engineering strategy for the preparation of hybrid inorganic-organic thin films, with a desired embedded property, in our study - chirality. Previous attempts to grow enantioselective thin films were mostly focused on self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) or template-assisted synthesis, followed by removal of the chiral template. Here, we report a method to prepare chiral hybrid inorganic-organic nanoscale thin films with controlled thickness and impressive enantioselective properties. We demonstrate that using MLD reactor, sequenced vapor deposition (SVD), can be used to produce enantioselective thin films by embedding the chirality of chiral building-blocks into thin films. The prepared thin films demonstrate enantioselectivity of ~ 20% and enantiomeric excess (e.e.) of up to 50%. We show that our controlled synthesis of chiral thin films creates opportunities for enantioselective coatings on various template and 3D membranes.