Constructions of helical coordination compounds

Helicity and chirality are essential elements of life. Many important biopolymers such as DNA and peptides possess right-handed helical structures, while the building blocks for the constructions of such biopolymers are D-ribose and L-amino acids, respectively. For better realizing the origin of the helicity of biopolymers, a tremendous expansion in research efforts has been devoted to the design of metal complexes exhibiting helical architectures in inorganic and coordination chemistry. However, to control the chirality and helicity of the entire structures at the supramolecular level is one of the major challenges in the design and synthesis of helical structures. In this highlight, we present the general approaches for the construction of helical coordination compounds, together with a few instances illustrating the correlation between the chirality of building blocks and the helicity of 1D chains, as well as the chirality transfer among the helices.