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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...

¹H NMR Chemical Shift Equivalence: Enantiotopic and Diastereotopic Protons

¹H NMR Chemical Shift Equivalence: Enantiotopic and Diastereotopic Protons

Replacing each alpha-hydrogen in chloroethane by bromine (or a different functional group) yields a pair of enantiomers. Such protons are called prochiral or enantiotopic and are related by a mirror plane. Enantiotopic protons are chemically equivalent in an achiral environment. Because most proton NMR spectra are recorded using achiral solvents, enantiotopic hydrogens yield a single signal.
In chiral compounds such as 2-butanol, replacing the methylene hydrogens at C3 produces a pair of...

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.

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...

Chirality at Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Sulfur

Chirality at Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Sulfur

Chirality is most prevalent in carbon-based tetrahedral compounds, but this important facet of molecular symmetry extends to sp3-hybridized nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur centers, including trivalent molecules with lone pairs. Here, the lone pair behaves as a functional group in addition to the other three substituents to form an analogous tetrahedral center that can be chiral.
A consequence of chirality is the need for enantiomeric resolution. While this is theoretically possible for all...

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...

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Dec 31, 2025

Ultrahigh Density Array of Vertically Aligned Small-molecular Organic Nanowires on Arbitrary Substrates

Ultrahigh Density Array of Vertically Aligned Small-molecular Organic Nanowires on Arbitrary Substrates

Published on: June 18, 2013

Chiral nanohole arrays.

Bin Ai¹, Hoang M Luong², Yiping Zhao²

¹School of Microelectronics and Communication Engineering, Chongqing University, Chongqing, P.R. China 400044. binai@cqu.edu.cn and Chongqing Key Laboratory of Bio perception & Intelligent Information Processing, Chongqing, P.R. China 400044.

|January 10, 2020

Summary

Chiral nanohole array (CNA) films fabricated using shadow sphere lithography (SSL) enable label-free chiral molecule detection. These films exhibit giant chiro-optical responses for sensitive picogram-level sensing.

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Last Updated: Dec 31, 2025

Ultrahigh Density Array of Vertically Aligned Small-molecular Organic Nanowires on Arbitrary Substrates

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Published on: June 18, 2013

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

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Published on: March 5, 2019

Ligand Nano-cluster Arrays in a Supported Lipid Bilayer

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Published on: April 23, 2017

Area of Science:

Nanotechnology
Plasmonics
Chiroptical Spectroscopy

Background:

Chiral molecules exhibit enantioselectivity, crucial in pharmaceuticals and biology.
Developing sensitive, label-free methods for enantiodifferentiation remains a challenge.
Existing chiral sensing technologies often require complex sample preparation or are less sensitive.

Purpose of the Study:

To develop a novel chiral nanohole array (CNA) film fabrication method.
To achieve highly sensitive, label-free enantiodiscrimination of chiral molecules.
To explore the potential of CNAs as polarization converters and chiral sensors.

Main Methods:

Fabrication of chiral nanohole array (CNA) films using shadow sphere lithography (SSL).
Breaking intrinsic mirror symmetry through multi-angle deposition on nanosphere monolayers.
Characterization of chiro-optical responses, including transmission, chirality, and g-factor.

Main Results:

Achieved giant chiro-optical responses: 45% transmission, 21°μm⁻¹ chirality, and 0.17 g-factor.
Demonstrated label-free enantiodiscrimination of biomolecules and drug molecules at picogram levels.
Attributed large responses to surface plasmon polariton and localized surface plasmon resonance-induced superchiral fields.

Conclusions:

SSL is an efficient method for fabricating high-performance CNA films.
CNAs offer unprecedented sensitivity for label-free chiral sensing.
CNAs are promising for low-cost, high-performance polarization converters and chiral sensors.