手性是生命现象中核心科学问题之一。手性分子在各种重要的生理过程中扮演着十分重要的角色。科学家设计合成了各种各样的折叠体来模拟生物大分子如DNA和蛋白质中的螺旋结构并赋予一定的功能。金属螺旋折叠体(helicate)是其中一种备受关注的折叠体，其组装结构研究是非常深入的，但是有关其手性的研究还相当不够，特别是如何通过非对映选择性组装构筑光学纯的金属螺旋折叠体并使这些折叠体拥有尺度合理的手性空腔，在此基础上实现超分子不对称催化以及对手性分子的识别和拆分。因此本项目拟发展高效构筑光学纯的金属螺旋折叠体的方法，通过理性的手性配体设计，在配体中引入刚性的三碟烯等手性结构基元，使其满足非对映选择性自组装的要求，从而得到具有功能化和光学纯的金属螺旋折叠体。

Chirality is fundamental in nature. Chiral molecules play very important roles in live systems. A large number of helical foldamers have developed to mimic the helical structures in DNA and proteins. Helicate is one of intensively studied foldamers. Although there are some important advances on self-assembled structures of helicates, their chirality is still less developed. There is great challenge for developing enantiomerically pure helicates with reasonable size for chiral recognition and asymmetric catalysis. In this project, we want to develop a highly effective method for constructing enantiomerically pure helicates by rational design. Our strategy is to take advantage of unique structural features of chiral triptycene to create novel functional helicates by diastereoselective self-assembly for satisfying the rapid demand in chiral functional materials.