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Related Concept Videos

Chirality02:25

Chirality

29.9K
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...
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Colloids03:22

Colloids

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Children at play often make suspensions such as mixtures of mud and water, flour and water, or a suspension of solid pigments in water known as tempera paint. These suspensions are heterogeneous mixtures composed of relatively large particles that are visible to the naked eye or can be seen with a magnifying glass. They are cloudy, and the suspended particles settle out after mixing. On the other hand, a solution is a homogeneous mixture in which no settling occurs and in which the dissolved...
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Colloids and Suspensions01:17

Colloids and Suspensions

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Children at play often make suspensions such as mixtures of mud and water, flour and water, or a suspension of solid pigments in water known as tempera paint. These suspensions are heterogeneous mixtures composed of relatively large particles visible to the naked eye or seen with a magnifying glass. They are cloudy, and the suspended particles settle out after mixing. The suspended particles in a suspension settle out after some time of mixing. The separation of particles from a suspension is...
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Chirality in Nature02:30

Chirality in Nature

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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.
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Molecules with Multiple Chiral Centers02:25

Molecules with Multiple Chiral Centers

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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...
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Colloidal precipitates01:09

Colloidal precipitates

6.5K
The high insolubility of some precipitates can result in an unfavorable relative supersaturation. This can lead to colloidal particles with a large surface-to-mass ratio, where adsorption is promoted. For instance, in the precipitation of silver chloride, silver ions are adsorbed on the surface of the colloidal particles, forming a primary layer. This layer attracts ions of opposite charge (such as nitrate ions), forming a diffuse secondary layer of adsorbed ions. This electric double layer...
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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Feb 18, 2026

An Electrochemical Cholesteric Liquid Crystalline Device for Quick and Low-Voltage Color Modulation
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Chiral liquid crystal colloids.

Ye Yuan1, Angel Martinez1, Bohdan Senyuk1

  • 1Department of Physics and Soft Materials Research Center, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA.

Nature Materials
|November 29, 2017
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Chiral colloidal particles influence the self-organization of liquid crystals, creating specific chiral or racemic superstructures. This chirality is key to controlling the mesoscopic order in these complex colloidal systems.

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Area of Science:

  • Soft Matter Physics
  • Materials Science
  • Colloidal Science

Background:

  • Colloidal particles disrupt liquid crystal alignment, leading to long-range interactions.
  • Particle shape and topology influence self-assembly, but the role of chirality is not well understood.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate how the chirality of colloidal inclusions affects self-organization in nematic liquid crystals.
  • To explore the interaction between colloidal particle chirality and nematic elasticity.

Main Methods:

  • Laser tweezers for particle manipulation.
  • Particle tracking and optical imaging for observation.
  • Numerical modeling based on Landau-de Gennes free energy minimization.

Main Results:

  • Chirality of colloidal particles dictates the formation of chiral or racemic colloidal superstructures.
  • Observed self-organization is consistent with theoretical predictions and free energy minimization.

Conclusions:

  • Colloidal particle chirality plays a crucial role in defining the mesoscopic order of liquid crystal colloids.
  • Chirality offers a potential mechanism for modulating the global self-organization of these systems.