RESUMO
Chiral induction is an emerging topic of interest in various areas of chemistry because of its relationship to the elusive mechanism of spontaneous symmetry breaking in nature. Buckminsterfullerene (C60 ) with the shape of a highly symmetric truncated icosahedron has rarely been referred for chiral induction due to the difficult symmetry breaking. In this work, we demonstrate that a chiral metal-organic framework (MOF) can provide a key field for chiral induction. C60 could be incorporated into the chiral nanochannels of the MOF using an in situ self-assembly strategy. The circular dichroism spectra of the resulting nanocomposites showed an intense chiral signal in the absorption region of C60 . Experimental and theoretical studies showed that this unprecedented chiral induction of C60 was attributed to hybridization of the molecular orbitals through a close association with the pore surface of the MOF. Our method can endow highly symmetric achiral compounds with chirality, paving the new way toward fabrication of novel chiral nanomaterials.