The chirality of (nano)structures is paramount in many phenomena, including biological processes, self-assembly, enantioselective reactions, and light or electron spin polarization. In the quest for new chiral materials, metallo-organic hybrids have been attractive candidates for exploiting the aforementioned scientific fields. Here, we show that chiral carbon nanoparticles, called carbon nanodots, can be readily prepared using hydrothermal microwave-assisted synthesis and easily purified. These particles, with a mean particle size around 3 nm, are highly soluble in water and display mirror-image profile both in the UV–Vis and in the infrared regions, as detected by electronic and vibrational circular dichroism, respectively. Finally, the nanoparticles are used as templates for the formation of chiral supramolecular porphyrin assemblies, showing that it is possible to use and transfer the chiral information. This simple (and effective) methodology opens up exciting opportunities for developing a variety of chiral composite materials and applications.

The design of novel carbon dots with ad hoc properties requires a comprehensive understanding of their formation mechanism, which is a complex task considering the number of variables involved, such as reaction time, structure of precursors or synthetic protocol employed. Herein, we systematically investigated the formation of carbon nanodots by tracking structural, chemical and photophysical features during the hydrothermal synthesis. We demonstrate that the formation of carbon nanodots consists of 4 consecutive steps: (i) aggregation of small organic molecules, (ii) formation of a dense core with an extended shell, (iii) collapse of the shell and (iv) aromatization of the core. In addition, we provide examples of routes towards tuning the core-shell design, synthesizing five novel carbon dots that all consist of an electron-dense core covered by an amine rich ligand shell.