Search research articles

ABOUT JoVE

Overview Leadership Blog JoVE Help Center

AUTHORS

Publishing Process Editorial Board Scope & Policies Peer Review FAQ Submit

LIBRARIANS

Testimonials Subscriptions Access Resources Library Advisory Board FAQ

RESEARCH

JoVE Journal Methods Collections JoVE Encyclopedia of Experiments Archive

EDUCATION

JoVE Core JoVE Business JoVE Science Education JoVE Lab Manual Faculty Resource Center Faculty Site

Terms & Conditions of Use

Related Concept Videos

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...

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...

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...

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by

Same author

Displacive In-Plane Ferroelectricity with Domain-Specific Curie Temperature in Van der Waals Semiconductors.

Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany)·2026

Same author

Probing the Nanoscale Onset of Plasticity in Electroplated Copper for Hybrid Bonding Structures via Multimodal Atomic Force Microscopy.

ACS applied nano materials·2025

Same author

SnSe<sub>1-x</sub>S<sub>x</sub> Alloys: Anisotropic Van der Waals Semiconductors with Tunable Bandgaps.

Small (Weinheim an der Bergstrasse, Germany)·2025

Same author

Multipolar Models for Anisotropic Vacancy Interactions in MXenes.

ACS applied materials & interfaces·2025

Same author

In-plane ferroelectricity with high Curie temperatures in nonequilibrium SnSe<sub>1-x</sub>S<sub>x</sub> van der Waals semiconductors.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·2025

Same author

Semiconducting Ferroelectric SnS<sub>1-</sub>Se<i></i> van der Waals Alloy Flakes.

Nano letters·2025

Search research articles

Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jul 24, 2025

Stimulated Stokes and Antistokes Raman Scattering in Microspherical Whispering Gallery Mode Resonators

Stimulated Stokes and Antistokes Raman Scattering in Microspherical Whispering Gallery Mode Resonators

Published on: April 4, 2016

Chirality and dislocation effects in single nanostructures probed by whispering gallery modes.

Peter Sutter¹, Larousse Khosravi-Khorashad¹, Cristian V Ciobanu²

¹Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE 68588, USA. psutter@unl.edu.

Materials Horizons

|July 10, 2023

Summary

Whispering gallery modes can detect chirality and dislocation effects in single germanium(II) sulfide (GeS) nanowires. This breakthrough enables the study of chiral light-matter interactions and electronic property modifications in individual nanostructures.

More Related Videos

Implementation of a Reference Interferometer for Nanodetection

Implementation of a Reference Interferometer for Nanodetection

Published on: April 26, 2014

Development of Whispering Gallery Mode Polymeric Micro-optical Electric Field Sensors

Development of Whispering Gallery Mode Polymeric Micro-optical Electric Field Sensors

Published on: January 29, 2013

Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: Jul 24, 2025

Stimulated Stokes and Antistokes Raman Scattering in Microspherical Whispering Gallery Mode Resonators

Stimulated Stokes and Antistokes Raman Scattering in Microspherical Whispering Gallery Mode Resonators

Published on: April 4, 2016

Implementation of a Reference Interferometer for Nanodetection

Implementation of a Reference Interferometer for Nanodetection

Published on: April 26, 2014

Development of Whispering Gallery Mode Polymeric Micro-optical Electric Field Sensors

Development of Whispering Gallery Mode Polymeric Micro-optical Electric Field Sensors

Published on: January 29, 2013

Area of Science:

Materials Science
Nanotechnology
Optoelectronics

Background:

Nanostructures like nanoribbons and nanowires are key for integrated photonic systems.
Extending their functionality with chiroptical phenomena and defect-induced electronic modifications is desirable.
Characterizing chirality and defects in single nanostructures using conventional methods is challenging.

Purpose of the Study:

To demonstrate the use of whispering gallery modes for probing chirality and dislocation effects in single nanowires.
To investigate the influence of screw dislocations on the optoelectronic properties of germanium(II) sulfide (GeS) nanowires.
To establish chiral light-matter interactions and dislocation-induced electronic modifications in single nanostructures.

Main Methods:

Vapor-liquid-solid growth of germanium(II) sulfide (GeS) nanowires, often forming growth spirals around screw dislocations.
Cathodoluminescence spectroscopy on single tapered GeS nanowires with both dislocated and defect-free segments.
Numerical simulations and ab-initio calculations to analyze experimental results.

Main Results:

Identification of chiral whispering gallery modes in single GeS nanowires.
Observation of a pronounced modulation of the electronic structure attributed to screw dislocations.
Demonstration that whispering gallery modes can probe chirality and dislocation effects in individual nanostructures.

Conclusions:

Whispering gallery modes are effective for characterizing chirality and dislocation effects in single nanostructures.
Screw dislocations in GeS nanowires significantly influence their electronic properties.
This work paves the way for multifunctional photonic architectures utilizing chiral light-matter interactions and defect engineering.