Bringing chiral functionality to in vivo applications of nanomaterials

Chirality is a universal property of an endless number of objects in the universe. Nanotechnology is rapidly expanding to find ways to introduce chirality to artificial nanostructures. In a recent publication in Light: Science and Applications, Das et al. have successfully used capping with chiral ligand molecules to obtain chiral carbon dots. The authors provide a theoretical model to describe the origin of chirality in carbon dots as arising due to exciton coupling in a pair of chiral chromophores. Due to non-toxic chemical composition and sizes as small as 2–5 nm, the chiral carbon dots have the potential to outperform other chiral nanostructures in numerous biomedical applications. However, similarly to chiral drugs, their chiral toxicity must be well understood before the carbon dots are brought to living systems.