Semiconductor colloidal nanostructures capped with chiral organic molecules are a research hotspot due to their wide range of important implications for photonic and spintronic applications. However, to date, the study of chiral ligands has been limited almost exclusively to naturally occurring chiral amino and hydroxy acids, which typically contain only one stereocenter. Here, we show the pronounced induction of chirality in atomically thin CdSe nanoplatelets (NPLs) by capping them with enantiopure menthol derivatives as multi-stereocenter molecules. L-(−)/D-(+)-menthyl thioglycolate, easily synthesized from L-(−)/D-(+)-menthol, is attached to Cd-rich (001) basal planes of 2- and 3-monolayer (ML) CdSe NPLs. We show the appearance of narrow sign-alternating bands in the circular dichroism (CD) spectra of 2 ML NPLs corresponding to heavy-hole (HH) and light-hole (LH) excitons with maximal dissymmetry g-factor up to 2.5 × 10⁻⁴. The most intense CD bands correspond to the lower-energy HH exciton, and in comparison with the N-acetyl-L-Cysteine ligand, the CD bands for L-(−)-menthyl thioglycolate have the opposite sign. The CD measurements are complemented with magnetic CD measurements and first-principles modeling. The obtained results may be of interest for designing new chiral semiconductor nanostructures and improving understanding of their chiroptical properties.

Sensors based on nanocomposites of quantum dots (QDs) and wide-gap metal oxides are of exceptional interest for photoactivated detection of toxic and pollutant gases without thermal heating. However, the class of detecting gases has been limited almost exclusively to oxidizing gases like NO₂. Here, we designed a photoactivated sensor for the selective detection of primary alcohols at room temperature using CdSe quantum dots coupled to a wide-gap SnO₂ semiconductor matrix. Our concept of the sensor operations is based on the photochemical reaction of primary alcohols via photoactivated QD-SnO₂ charge transfer and does not involve chemisorbed oxygen, which is traditional for the operation of metal oxide sensors. We demonstrated an efficient sensor response to C₁–C₄ primary alcohols of ppm concentration under photoexcitation with a yellow LED in the absence of a signal from other volatile organic compounds (VOCs). We believe that proposed sensor concept opens up new ways to design photoactivated sensors without heating for the detection of VOCs.