Chiral ligand conjugated transition metal oxide nanoparticles (NPs) are a promising platform for chiral recognition, biochemical sensing, and chiroptics. Herein, we present chirality-based strategy for effective sensing of mercury ions via ligand-induced chirality derived from metal-to-ligand charge transfer (MLCT) effects. The ligand competition effect between molybdenum and heavy metal ions such as mercury is designated to be essential for MLCT chirality. With this know-how, mercury ions, whic
