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Chirality in Nature

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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.

Chirality

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Updated: Sep 15, 2025

An Electrochemical Cholesteric Liquid Crystalline Device for Quick and Low-Voltage Color Modulation

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Dynamic optical chirality based on liquid-crystal-embedded nano-cilia photonic structures.

Sufan Li¹, Yiheng Zhang², Yang Wang³

¹State Key Laboratory of Chips and Systems for Advanced Light Field Display, School of Physics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, 100081, China.

Nature Communications

|July 16, 2025

Summary

Artificial chiral photonic structures with dynamic chiroptical responses were created using nano-kirigami and liquid crystals. This dual chiral framework enables tunable circular dichroism and light focusing for advanced optical applications.

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Area of Science:

Photonics
Materials Science
Nanotechnology

Background:

Artificial chiral photonic structures exhibit stronger chiroptical responses than natural chiral molecules.
Current chiral structures typically have fixed optical properties post-fabrication, limiting dynamic applications.

Purpose of the Study:

To develop an active optical chirality strategy for dynamic chiroptical responses.
To create a tunable chiroptical metalens for controlling circularly polarized light.

Main Methods:

Fabrication of a dual chiral framework using nano-kirigami and self-organization.
Integration of cilia structures and cholesteric liquid crystal (LC).

Main Results:

Achieved dynamic and wide-ranging chiroptical responses at the nanoscale.
Demonstrated amplification, elimination, and reversal of circular dichroism.
Constructed a thermally tunable chiroptical metalens with a focusing switch for circularly polarized light.

Conclusions:

The proposed cilia-LC framework offers a novel approach to active optical chirality.
This technique enables dynamic control over chiroptical properties with potential in imaging, encryption, displays, and sensors.