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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 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...

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...

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Aug 6, 2025

DNA Origami-Mediated Substrate Nanopatterning of Inorganic Structures for Sensing Applications

DNA Origami-Mediated Substrate Nanopatterning of Inorganic Structures for Sensing Applications

Published on: September 27, 2019

Photonically active bowtie nanoassemblies with chirality continuum.

Prashant Kumar^1,2, Thi Vo^1,2, Minjeong Cha^1,2

¹Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.

|March 16, 2023

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Researchers developed tunable chiral microparticles with a unique bowtie shape, overcoming the binary view of molecular chirality. These particles enable the creation of advanced optical devices with adjustable polarization properties.

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Fabrication and Operation of a Nano-Optical Conveyor Belt

Fabrication and Operation of a Nano-Optical Conveyor Belt

Published on: August 26, 2015

Area of Science:

Nanotechnology and Materials Science
Physical Chemistry
Optics and Photonics

Background:

Chirality is typically viewed as a binary property (left/right) in chemistry, despite its continuous mathematical nature.
A lack of stable chemical structures with continuously tunable chirality limits advancements in chiral material applications.

Purpose of the Study:

To synthesize and characterize nanostructured microparticles exhibiting a continuum of chirality.
To explore the potential of these tunable chiral particles in creating advanced optical devices.

Main Methods:

Fabrication of anisotropic bowtie-shaped nanostructured microparticles using self-limited assembly.
Characterization of particle geometry (twist angle, pitch, width, thickness, length) and chirality.
Spectroscopic analysis of circular dichroism (CD) peaks and polarization rotation.

Main Results:

Demonstrated a continuum of chirality in bowtie nanoassemblies, tunable by adjusting particle dimensions.
Observed strong circular dichroism peaks arising from both absorptive and scattering effects.
Correlated chirality measures with spectral positions of CD peaks and utilized variable polarization rotation for metasurface printing.

Conclusions:

Nanostructured bowtie microparticles offer a practical platform for realizing continuous chirality in materials.
These particles enable the development of spectrally tunable metasurfaces with tailored polarization signatures.
Potential applications include advanced light detection and ranging (LIDAR) devices and other photonic technologies.