Chiral Nanoparticle Chains on Inorganic Nanotube Templates.

Fabrication of chiral assemblies of plasmonic nanoparticles is a highly attractive and challenging task, with promising applications in light emission, detection, and sensing. So far, primarily organic chiral templates have been used for chirality inscription. Despite recent progress in using chiral ionic liquids in synthesis, the use of organic templates significantly limits the variety of nanoparticle preparation techniques. Here, we demonstrate the utilization of seemingly achiral inorganic nanotubes as templates for the chiral assembly of nanoparticles. We show that both metallic and dielectric nanoparticles can be attached to scroll-like chiral edges propagating on the surfaces of WS nanotubes. Such assembly can be performed at temperatures as high as 550 °C. This large temperature range significantly widens the portfolio of nanoparticle fabrication techniques, allowing us to demonstrate a variety of chiral nanoparticle assemblies, ranging from metals (Au, Ga), semiconductors (Ge), and compound semiconductors (GaAs) to oxides (WO).