Chiral nanoparticle chains on inorganic nanotube templates

Abstract: 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. However, this significantly limits the variety of nanoparticle preparation techniques to an in-pot approach at very low synthesis temperatures. Here, we demonstrate 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 WS2 nanotubes. Due to relatively high temperature stability of these nanotubes, such assembly can be performed at temperatures as high as 550 {\deg}C. This large temperature range significantly widens the portfolio of usable nanoparticle fabrication techniques, allowing us to demonstrate a variety of chiral nanoparticle assemblies, ranging from metals (Au, Ga) and semiconductors (Ge) to oxides (WO3).