Abstract
There is large interest in replicating biological
supramolecular structures in inorganic materials that are
capable of mimicking biological properties. The use of 5-
guanosine monophosphate in the presence of Na+ and K+ ions
as a supramolecular template for the synthesis of well-ordered
mesostructured materials is reported here. Mesostructured
particles with the confined template exhibit high structural
order at both meso- and atomic scales, with a lower structural
symmetry in the columnar mesophase. Although a chiral space
group can not be deduced from X-ray diffraction, analysis by
electron microscopy and circular dichroism confirms a chiral
stacking arrangement along the c-axis. Guanosine monophosphate
based mesophases thus illustrate the possibility for
specific molecular imprinting of mesoporous materials by
genetic material and the potential for higher definition in
molecular recognition.
