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Updated: Aug 11, 2026

Coulomb Explosion Imaging as a Tool to Distinguish Between Stereoisomers
Published on: August 18, 2017
Photo-induced chirality switching in a cobaloxime complex crystal
Katsuyoshi Ikeda1, Weitao Liu, Yuen Ron Shen
1Department of Materials Science, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 152-8551, Japan. kikeda@chem.titech.ac.jp
Abstract:
Switching of molecular chirality under photo-irradiation was studied in a cobaloxime complex crystal. Excitation of the d-d transition of the Co(III) ion appeared to be much more effective in inducing the chirality change than excitation of the ligand-metal charge transfer band although the latter is more effective in breaking the Co-C bond that initiates the chirality switching. The chirality change versus irradiation time showed a steplike behavior suggesting that chirality switching of molecules occurred in correlation with their nearest neighbors.
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