LAUSR

Chiral regulation to prepare functional materials has aroused considerable interest in recent years. However, little is known on the effect of chirality of ligands in the metal-organic coordination assembly process. We report the self-assembly of diphenylalanine peptide (Phe-Phe, FF), the core fragment of Aβ protein, with metal copper ion (Cu2+) into metal-organic assemblies with chirality-encoded structures and properties. The chirality-dependent metal-dipeptide assembles with different morphologies and supramolecular chirality were obtained by facile changing of the FF chirality. Single-crystal results indicate that (L)-FF coordinated with Cu2+ into a cross-chain structure with a five-coordinated style, while the racemates of (L+D)-FF with Cu2+ crystallized into an (L)-Cu2+-(D)-Cu2+ alternated four-coordinating structure, enabling a higher mechanical and catalytic performance. The Young's modulus of (L+D)-FF-Cu is as high as 34.36 GPa, which is 2.45 times higher than that of (L)-FF-Cu. Furthermore, both of them follow the characteristic enzyme kinetics and show higher catalytic activity than natural laccase at the same mass concentration. Specifically, the calculated catalytic efficiency (kcat/KM) of (L+D)-FF-Cu is 1.14 times higher than that of (L)-FF-Cu, and the (L+D)-FF-Cu shows significantly enhanced stability and reusability compared with (L)-FF-Cu. The results reveal that highly functional materials could be constructed by encoding the chirality of molecular building blocks.