What Contributes to the Measured Chiral Optical Response of the Glutathione-Protected Au<sub>25</sub> Nanocluster?
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 37288973.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1021/acsnano.3c01309 and PMC identifier 10311591.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
The water-soluble glutathione-protected [Au<sub>25</sub>(GSH)<sub>18</sub>]<sup>-1</sup> nanocluster was investigated by integrating several methodologies such as molecular dynamics simulations, essential dynamics analysis, and state-of-the-art time-dependent density functional theory calculations. Fundamental aspects such as conformational, weak interactions and solvent effects, especially hydrogen-bonds, were included and found to play a fundamental role in assessing the optical response of this system. Our analysis demonstrated not only that the electronic circular dichroism is extremely sensitive to the solvent presence but also that the solvent itself plays an active role in the optical activity of such system, forming a chiral solvation shell around the cluster. Our work demonstrates a successful strategy to investigate in detail chiral interfaces between metal nanoclusters and their environments, applicable, e.g., to chiral electronic interactions between clusters and biomolecules.