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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.

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...

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...

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Mar 2, 2026

Assembly of Gold Nanorods into Chiral Plasmonic Metamolecules Using DNA Origami Templates

Assembly of Gold Nanorods into Chiral Plasmonic Metamolecules Using DNA Origami Templates

Published on: March 5, 2019

Origami-Based Reconfigurable Metamaterials for Tunable Chirality.

Zuojia Wang^1,2,3, Liqiao Jing², Kan Yao⁴

¹Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, 02115, USA.

Advanced Materials (Deerfield Beach, Fla.)

|May 9, 2017

Summary

This study introduces origami-based metamaterials with switchable electromagnetic responses. These lightweight, reconfigurable metadevices offer tunable chirality and reduced density for advanced applications.

Keywords:

metamaterials origami reconfigurable materials

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Last Updated: Mar 2, 2026

Assembly of Gold Nanorods into Chiral Plasmonic Metamolecules Using DNA Origami Templates

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Area of Science:

Materials Science
Electromagnetism
Metamaterials

Background:

Origami art involves folding 2D materials into 3D objects.
Metamaterials offer unique electromagnetic properties.
Controlling metamaterial properties dynamically is a key challenge.

Purpose of the Study:

To develop origami-based metamaterials with dynamically controllable electromagnetic responses.
To investigate the relationship between folding state and chiral responses in Miura-ori split-ring resonators.
To explore the potential for lightweight and reconfigurable metadevices.

Main Methods:

Fabrication of origami-based metamaterials using Miura-ori folding patterns.
Experimental characterization of electromagnetic responses, including circular dichroism.
Analysis of structural deformation and its impact on electric and magnetic dipoles.

Main Results:

Switchable electromagnetic responses achieved by altering the folding state of Miura-ori split-ring resonators.
Strong chiral responses observed, with circular dichroism as high as 0.6.
Significant reduction in relative density (to 2%) compared to unfolded structures.
Demonstrated control over chirality switching through deformation direction and kinematics.

Conclusions:

Origami-based metamaterials offer a novel platform for dynamically tunable electromagnetic properties.
The developed metadevices are lightweight, reconfigurable, and deployable.
This approach opens new possibilities for advanced metadevices with tailored electromagnetic and mechanical characteristics.