Growth of textured adenine thin films to exhibit only chiral faces

Abstract

The growth of adenine on Au(111) from the submonolayer up to several microns film thickness is studied by combining STM and surface X-ray diffraction techniques. The study shows that adenine thin films are composed of highly textured crystallites with the reported α-adenine crystal structure in such a way that they only exhibit (001)-faces. Such faces, with chiral p2 symmetry planes, have an average size of 15 nm. Thus, the formed adenine films reported herein, which expose only chiral and biocompatible faces, might find applications such as enantioselective heterogeneous catalysts for the chemical and pharmaceutical industries. Getting a grip on handedness: Surface X-ray diffraction studies show that the prochiral adenine molecule grows on gold, exposing homochiral and biocompatible surfaces in the process. The resulting structure has p2 symmetry as also shown by the STM images. The formed chiral surfaces might find applications in enantioselective heterogeneous catalysis and the pharmaceutical industries. Copyright © 2011 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.