Chirality is one of the most fascinating occurrences in the natural world and plays a crucial role in chemistry, biochemistry, pharmacology, and medicine. Chirality has also been envisaged to play an important role in nanotechnology and particularly in nanophotonics, therefore, chiral and chiroptical active nanoparticles (NPs) have attracted a lot of interest over recent years. Optical activity can be induced in NPs in several different ways, including via the direct interaction of achiral NPs with a chiral molecule. This results in circular dichroism (CD) in the region of the intrinsic absorption of the NPs. This interaction in turn affects the optical properties of the chiral molecule. Recently, studies of induced chirality in quantum dots (QDs) has deserved special attention and this phenomenon has been explored in detail in a number of important papers. In this article, we review these important recent advances in the preparation and formation of chiral molecule–QD systems and analyze the mechanisms of induced chirality, the factors influencing CD spectra shape and the intensity of the CD, as well as the effect of QDs on chiral molecules. We also consider potential applications of these types of chiroptical QDs including sensing, bioimaging, enantioselective synthesis, circularly polarized light emitters, and spintronic devices. Finally, we highlight the problems and possibilities that can arise in research areas concerning the interaction of QDs with chiral molecules and that a mutual influence approach must be taken into account particularly in areas, such as photonics, cell imaging, pharmacology, nanomedicine and nanotoxicology.

Stable water-soluble complexes of Cd-free ZnSe/ZnS quantum dots (QDs) and chlorin e6 complexes have been prepared. These complexes have shown approximately 50% intracomplex fluorescence resonance energy transfer from QDs to chlorin e6. The photodynamic therapy (PDT) test of the complexes against the Erlich acsite carcinoma cell culture demonstrated a two-fold enhancement of the cancer cell photodynamic destruction as compared to that of free chlorin e6 molecules. It was shown that the PDT effect was significantly increased due to two factors: the efficient QD–chlorin e6 photoexcitation energy transfer and the improvement of cellular uptake of the photosensitizer in the presence of ZnSe/ZnS QDs.

The influence of the chirality of semiconductor nanocrystals, CdSe/ZnS quantum dots (QDs) capped with L - and D -cysteine, on the efficiency of their uptake by living Ehrlich Ascite carcinoma cells is studied by spectral- and time-resolved fluorescence microspectroscopy. We report an evident enantioselective process where cellular uptake of the L -Cys QDs is almost twice as effective as that of the D -Cys QDs. This finding paves the way for the creation of novel approaches to control the biological properties and behavior of nanomaterials in living cells.

Research on materials with perovskite crystal symmetry for photonics applications represent a rapidly growing area of the photonics development due to their unique optical and electrical properties. Among them are high charge carrier mobility, high photoluminescence quantum yield, and high extinction coefficients, which can be tuned through all visible range by a controllable change in chemical composition. To date, most of such materials contain lead atoms, which is one of the obstacles for their large-scale implementation. This disadvantage can be overcome via the substitution of lead with less toxic chemical elements, such as Sn, Bi, Yb, etc., and their mixtures. Herein, we summarized the scientific works from 2016 related to the lead-free perovskite materials with stress on the lasing and lighting applications. The synthetic approaches, chemical composition, and morphology of materials, together with the optimal device configurations depending on the material parameters are summarized with a focus on future challenges.