Mixed-ligand strategy for synthesizing water-soluble chiral gold clusters with phosphine ligands.

Water-soluble chiral metal clusters have drawn much attention by virtue of their fascinating physicochemical properties and potential biomedical applications, but currently, phosphine-protected Au clusters with both chirality and water-solubility are still very limited. In this article, we demonstrate a mixed-ligand strategy for the facile synthesis of atomically precise, water-soluble chiral Au clusters protected by phosphine alone. The clusters are obtained by the reduction of aurate ions in the presence of a phosphine mixture consisting of highly hydrophilic monophosphine (, triphenylphosphine trisulfonate; TPPTS) and hydrophobic chiral diphosphine (, -Segphos or -BINAP), both of which are commercially available.