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Chiral carbon dots from glucose by room temperature alkali-assisted synthesis for electrocatalytic oxidation of tryptophan enantiomers

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Abstract

Chiral catalysis is one of the most direct and effective approach to obtain pure optical enantiomers. Chiral carbon dots (CDs) as carbon-based chiral catalysts show great potential in chiral catalysis. Herein, we report a facile one step base-catalyzed aldol condensation to fabricate the chiral CDs from glucose at ambient temperature and pressure. The formation of chiral CDs involves the processes of isomerization and aldol condensation. These chiral CDs have been demonstrated that they have selective capacity for electrocatalytic oxidization of tryptophan enantiomers. L type of CDs (LCDs) is more likely to catalyze L-tryptophan (Trp) than D-Trp with the selective factor (/L//D) of 1.60, whereas the D type of CDs (DCDs) tends to catalyze D-Trp (/L//D: 0.63). Theoretical calculations combined with various contrast experiments (temperature and pH) demonstrate that the selectively electrocatalytic capacity of chiral CDs toward Trp isomers is due to the different hydrogen-bond interactions between chiral CDs and Trp.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (No. BE2022425), National Key R&D Program of China (Nos. 2020YFA0406104 and 2020YFA0406101), National MCF Energy R&D Program of China (No. 2018YFE0306105), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 52271223, 52272043, 51725204, 51972216, 52202107, and 52201269), Innovative Research Group Project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51821002), Key R&D program of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region (No. 2022BEG02006), Ningxia Autonomous Region flexible introduction of science and technology innovation team (No. 2021RXTDLX08), Agricultural science and technology innovation project of Suzhou Science and Technology Development Plan (No. SNG2020074), Macau Youths Scholars Program, Collaborative Innovation Center of Suzhou Nano Science and Technology, the 111 Project, and Suzhou Key Laboratory of Functional Nano and Soft Materials.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Macao Institute of Materials Science and Engineering (MIMSE), MUST-SUDA Joint Research Center for Advanced Functional Materials, Macau University of Science and Technology, Taipa, Macao, 999078, China

    Mengling Zhang, Youyong Li & Zhenhui Kang

  2. Institute of Functional Nano and Soft Materials (FUNSOM), Jiangsu Key Laboratory for Carbon-based Functional Materials and Devices, Joint International Research Laboratory of Carbon-Based Functional Materials and Devices, Soochow University, Suzhou, 215123, China

    Mengling Zhang, Xin Du, Yurong Ma, Xiting Wang, Hui Huang, Yang Liu, Youyong Li & Zhenhui Kang

  3. Research Center for Carbon-based Electronics and Key Laboratory for the Physics and Chemistry of Nanodevices, School of Electronics, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China

    Xing Fan

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  1. Mengling Zhang
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Correspondence to Youyong Li or Zhenhui Kang.

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12274_2023_5601_MOESM1_ESM.pdf

Chiral carbon dots from glucose by room temperature alkali-assisted synthesis for electrocatalytic oxidation of tryptophan enantiomers

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Zhang, M., Fan, X., Du, X. et al. Chiral carbon dots from glucose by room temperature alkali-assisted synthesis for electrocatalytic oxidation of tryptophan enantiomers. Nano Res. 16, 8929–8936 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-023-5601-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-023-5601-6

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