Recently, circularly polarized luminescence (CPL)-active systems have become a very hot and interesting subject in chirality- and optics-related areas. The CPL-active systems are usually available by two approaches: covalently combining a luminescent centre to chiral motif or associating the guest of luminescent probe to a chiral host. However, all the chiral components in CPL materials were organic, although the luminescent components were alternatively organics or inorganics. Herein, the first totally inorganic CPL-active system by "luminescent guest-chiral host" strategy is proposed. Luminescent sub-10 nm lanthanide oxides (Eu O or Tb O ) nanoparticles (guests) were encapsulated into chiral non-helical SiO nanofibres (host) through calcination of chiral SiO hybrid nanofibres, trapping Eu (or Tb ). These lanthanide oxides display circular dichroism (CD) optical activity in the ultraviolet wavelength and CPL signals around at 615 nm for Eu and 545 nm for Tb . This work has implications for inorganic-based CPL-active systems by incorporation of various luminescent guests within chiral inorganic hosts.

Self-transfer of chiral information was found in the magnesiothermic reduction of amorphous chiral SiO2 nanofibers into crystalline Si.

Systems that show circularly polarized luminescence (CPL) are usually constructed in one of two possible ways: either covalently binding the chiral moieties (usually organic compounds) to luminophores (inorganic or organic compounds) or associating the luminophores as guests with chiral hosts (usually organic compounds). Herein, we propose inorganic‐based CPL‐active systems constructed by the “chiral host‐luminescent guest” strategy, in which silica acts as a chiral host to endow various luminescent guests with CPL. The chiral silica was modified by silane coupling with amino or phenyl groups to allow interaction with luminescent guests, and then used in combination with acidic achiral dyes, lead‐halide type perovskites, and aggregation‐induced emission luminogens (AIEgens). Interestingly, when these achiral guests were noncovalently confined in surface‐modified chiral silica, the guests showed chiroptical behavior in the circular dichroism (CD) spectra, and thus became CPL active, even though they are not inherently chiral. The surface functional groups on the silica play very important roles in transferring the chiral information from the silica to the guests. This work provides a new concept for constructing CPL‐active systems using inorganic materials as a chiral source.

Au nanoparticles (NPs) labeled with the handedness tag of “d-” or “l-”, which were detached from inorganic chiral silica, showed both intrinsic chirality and surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) activity. In the presence of these chiral Au substrates, it was found that the enantiomer of cystine with the same handedness tag of Au NPs would show stronger Raman scattering signal intensities than those of the enantiomer with the opposite tag, where the differences could be over three times. Consequently, this work afforded a novel enantioselective recognition method on ordinary Raman spectroscopy by using chiral plasmonic metallic nanomaterials.