Reversible helical chirality of perylene bisimide aggregates: amino acid-directed chiral transfer and chiral inversion

Through the formation of dynamic covalent bonds, we succeeded, for the first time, in achieving a reversible chiral transfer from amino acids to perylene bisimide aggregates in aqueous solutions. Two opposite helical aggregations are induced with L-phenylalanine and L-tyrosine, respectively. It is possible that the change in configurations of phenyl groups in amino acids leads to the chiral inversion of BAPBI arrangements.