Hard-templating of chiral TiO(2) nanofibres with electron transition-based optical activity

The fabrication of optically active inorganic nanomaterials with chiral superstructures attracts attention because of their potential applications in chemical sensing and non-linear optics. Here, we present a facile way to prepare TiO(2) nanofibres, in which the nanocrystals are helically arranged into a chiral superstructure. Notably, the chiral superstructure shows strong optical activity due to the difference of absorbing left- and right-handed circularly polarized light. This special optical activity resulted from electron transition from the valence band to the conduction band of TiO(2) through a vicinal effect of helically arranged TiO(2) nanocrystals.