Homochiral self-assembly of biocoordination polymers: anion-triggered helicity and absolute configuration inversion

The different natures of the weakly coordinating anions - triflate or perchlorate - in the Cu2+-mediated self-assembly of cytidine monophosphate nucleotide play a fundamental role in the homochiral resolution process, yielding one-dimensional copper(II) coordination polymers of opposite helicity that can be easily inverted, in a reversible way, by changing the nature of the anion as revealed by circular dichroism experiments both in solution and in the solid state.