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Related Concept Videos

Chirality02:25

Chirality

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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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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 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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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Feb 15, 2026

Assembly of Gold Nanorods into Chiral Plasmonic Metamolecules Using DNA Origami Templates
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Digitalizing Self-Assembled Chiral Superstructures for Optical Vortex Processing.

Peng Chen1, Ling-Ling Ma1, Wei Duan1

  • 1National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, College of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210093, China.

Advanced Materials (Deerfield Beach, Fla.)
|January 16, 2018
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Researchers developed a digitalized chiral superstructure using cholesteric liquid crystals (CLCs) to manipulate light. This innovative optical vortex (OV) processor enables efficient, simultaneous processing of multiple OVs, advancing optical technologies.

Keywords:
chiral superstructurescholesteric liquid crystalsphotoalignment

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Area of Science:

  • Soft Matter Physics
  • Optics and Photonics
  • Materials Science

Background:

  • Cholesteric liquid crystals (CLCs) possess unique polychromatic and spin-dependent phase modulation properties.
  • Existing optical apparatus can be significantly upgraded through advanced light manipulation techniques.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To propose a concept for digitalized chiral superstructures for arbitrary manipulation of reflective geometric phase.
  • To demonstrate an innovative cholesteric liquid crystal optical vortex (OV) processor for parallel OV processing.

Main Methods:

  • Encoding a specifically designed binary pattern onto CLC chiral superstructures.
  • Fabricating self-assembled chiral superstructures for optical applications.

Main Results:

  • Demonstrated an innovative CLC optical vortex (OV) processor capable of extracting up to 25 different OVs.
  • Achieved equal efficiency for all extracted OVs over a 116 nm wavelength range.
  • Enabled simultaneous detection of multiplexed OVs without mode crosstalk or distortion.

Conclusions:

  • The digitalized chiral superstructures offer a polychromatic, large-capacity, and in situ method for parallel OV processing.
  • These self-assembled chiral superstructures provide a versatile platform for OV manipulation and other advanced applications in soft matter.
  • This work is a vital step towards extending the understanding and applications of ordered soft matter.