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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

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...

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jul 11, 2025

Optimization, Test and Diagnostics of Miniaturized Hall Thrusters

Optimization, Test and Diagnostics of Miniaturized Hall Thrusters

Published on: February 16, 2019

Multifunctional Chiral Chemically-Powered Micropropellers for Cargo Transport and Manipulation.

Ashlee D McGovern¹, Mu-Jie Huang², Jiyuan Wang³

¹Department of Chemistry, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, USA.

Small (Weinheim an Der Bergstrasse, Germany)

|November 8, 2023

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Researchers fabricated chiral micropropellers using 3D nanoscale printing. These micropropellers, powered by a chemical reaction, can be magnetically controlled for tasks like cargo transport, demonstrating enhanced functionality through chirality and shape optimization.

Keywords:

cargo manipulation chirality computer modeling microrobotics self-propulsion

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Area of Science:

Nanotechnology and Materials Science
Robotics and Automation

Background:

Synthetic self-propelled nano/microparticles are crucial for microrobotics and drug delivery.
Fabrication limitations restrict particle complexity and functionality.

Purpose of the Study:

To develop advanced chiral micropropellers using 3D nanoscale printing.
To explore multifunctional behaviors and optimize design parameters for autonomous micromachines.

Main Methods:

Fabrication of chiral micropropellers via 3D nanoscale printing.
Utilizing hydrogen peroxide reduction reaction for propulsion.
Employing computation modeling (mesoscale molecular dynamics) for design optimization.
Experimental validation of simulated behaviors.

Main Results:

Chiral micropropellers exhibited magnetic field-controlled behaviors: loitering, directed migration, and cargo capture/transport.
Computer simulations predicted, and experiments confirmed, attraction between clockwise rotating propellers and repulsion between counterclockwise ones.
Chirality and optimized shape significantly enhanced micromachine functionality.

Conclusions:

3D nanoscale printing enables fabrication of complex, functional chiral micropropellers.
Chirality plays a key role in controlling micropropeller interactions and behaviors.
Optimized synthetic autonomous micromachines show promise for advanced nanoscale applications.