Chirality has risen as an attractive topic in materials
research
in recent years, but the attainment of enantiopure materials remains
a major challenge. Herein, we obtained homochiral nanoclusters by
a recrystallization strategy, without any chiral factors (i.e., chiral
ligands, counterions, etc.). Through the rapid flipping of configuration
of silver nanoclusters in solution, the initial racemicAg40(triclinic) nanoclusters are converted
to homochiral (orthorhombic) as revealed by X-ray crystallography.
In the seeded crystallization, one homochiralAg40crystal is used as a seed to direct the growth
of crystals with specific chirality. Furthermore, enantiopureAg40nanoclusters can be used as amplifiers
for the detection of chiral carboxylic drugs. This work not only provides
chiral conversion and amplification strategies to obtain homochiral
nanoclusters but also explains the chirality origin of nanoclusters
at the molecular level.