Interfacial interaction promoted titanium oxide-based organic-inorganic nanoheterojunctions by chiral host-guest binding

Abstract Although titanium oxide (TiO2)-based organic-inorganic nanostructures attract increasing attention in energy fields, accurate regulation of close contact between TiO2 and organic components in nanostructures that determines their performance is still a critical task. Here, the interfacial interaction in TiO2-based organic-inorganic nanoheterojunctions is promoted by host-guest interactions, which are obtained through chiral recognition between chirality imprinted TiO2 and chiral organic molecules (L-PheAD), leading to their close contact. This close contact is due to the matching structure obtained from a multi-level chirality transfer between TiO2 and L-PheAD during molecular imprinting, facilitating the strong electronic coupling and resulting in a positive correlation between chiral signal intensity and the interface bonding strength in the nanoheterojunction. The tightly packed interface is further confirmed by the enhanced photocatalytic activity of TiO2-L-PheAD nanoheterojunctions. This work creates an opportunity to tailor the intimate contact between organic-inorganic interfaces based on host-guest systems with matched chiral space.