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Chirality

Chirality

Chirality is a term that describes the lack of mirror symmetry in an object. In other words, chiral objects cannot be superposed on their mirror images. For example, our feet are chiral, as the mirror image of the left foot, the right foot, cannot be superposed on the left foot.
Chiral objects exhibit a sense of handedness when they interact with another chiral object. For example, our left foot can only fit in the left shoe and not in the right shoe. Achiral objects — objects that have...

Chirality in Nature

Chirality in Nature

Chirality is the most intriguing yet essential facet of nature, governing life’s biochemical processes and precision. It can be observed from a snail shell pattern in a macroscopic world to an amino acid, the minutest building block of life. Most of the snails around the world have right-coiled shells because of the intrinsic chirality in their genes. All the amino acids present in the human body exist in an enantiomerically pure state, except for glycine - the sole achiral amino acid. The...

Properties of Enantiomers and Optical Activity

Properties of Enantiomers and Optical Activity

It is essential to understand the difference between chiral and achiral interactions and the implications thereof in optical activity and their applications. Just as our feet, which are chiral, interact uniquely with chiral objects, such as a pair of shoes, but identically with achiral socks, enantiomers of a molecule exhibit different properties only when they interact with other chiral media. An example of a significant implication from this facet is the phenomenon known as optical activity,...

Prochirality

Prochirality

The concept of prochirality leads to the nomenclature of the individual faces of a molecule and plays a crucial role in the enantioselective reaction. It is a concept where two or more achiral molecules react to produce chiral products. A typical process is the reaction of an achiral ketone to generate a chiral alcohol. Here, the achiral reactant reacts with an achiral reducing agent, sodium borohydride, to generate an equimolar mixture of the chiral enantiomers of the product. For example, an...

Molecules with Multiple Chiral Centers

Molecules with Multiple Chiral Centers

Molecules that possess multiple chiral centers can afford a large number of stereoisomers. For instance, while some molecules like 2-butanol have one chiral center, defined as a tetrahedral carbon atom with four different substituents attached, several molecules like butane-2,3-diol have multiple chiral centers. A simple formula to predict the number of stereoisomers possible for a molecule with n chiral centers is 2n. However, there can be a lower number where some of the stereoisomers are...

Stereoisomerism

Stereoisomerism

Isomerism in Complexes
Isomers are different chemical species that have the same chemical formula.
Transition metal complexes often exist as geometric isomers, in which the same atoms are connected through the same types of bonds but with differences in their orientation in space. Coordination complexes with two different ligands in the cis and trans positions from a ligand of interest form isomers. For example, the octahedral [Co(NH3)4Cl2]+ ion has two isomers (Figure 1) In the cis...

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 27, 2026

Coulomb Explosion Imaging as a Tool to Distinguish Between Stereoisomers

Coulomb Explosion Imaging as a Tool to Distinguish Between Stereoisomers

Published on: August 18, 2017

Chirality in nonlinear optics.

Levi M Haupert¹, Garth J Simpson

¹Department of Chemistry, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907, USA.

Annual Review of Physical Chemistry

|December 3, 2008

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

New nonlinear optical methods reveal chirality in thin films. This study introduces a simple framework to link chiral responses to molecular structure, advancing chiral materials science.

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Area of Science:

Nonlinear Optics
Chirality Studies
Materials Science

Background:

Second-order nonlinear optical (NLO) measurements show high sensitivity to chirality.
Chiral responses in thin films, like second harmonic generation (SHG) and sum frequency generation (SFG), are comparable to achiral responses.
Chiral specificity enables symmetry-allowed SFG in isotropic chiral media, validating 50-year-old predictions.

Purpose of the Study:

To develop intuitive predictive models for relating measured chiral responses to molecular and macromolecular structure.
To define and analyze mechanisms of chiral effects in uniaxially oriented assemblies.
To provide a framework for quantitatively recovering measured chiral-specific activity.

Main Methods:

Review of experimental and computational studies on chiral thin films and materials.
Definition and consideration of three distinct mechanisms: orientational, intrinsic, and isotropic chirality.
Analysis of model systems including bacteriorhodopsin films, binaphthol, and collagen.

Main Results:

Demonstration of NLO measurements' high sensitivity to chirality in thin films.
Confirmation of symmetry-allowed SFG in isotropic chiral media.
Establishment of a simple framework linking chiral effects to molecular structure across diverse models.

Conclusions:

The three defined mechanisms (orientational, intrinsic, isotropic chirality) provide a unified understanding of chiral effects in oriented assemblies.
The proposed framework offers a quantitative method for recovering chiral-specific activity from NLO measurements.
This work advances the design and application of chiral thin films and materials.