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Updated: Jan 16, 2026
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Fabricating van der Waals Heterostructures with Precise Rotational Alignment
Published on: July 5, 2019
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Chirality-driven spin dynamics and manipulation in all-inorganic chiral heterostructures
1Quantum Materials Center, Department of Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA.
Nature Communications
|September 25, 2025
Summary
All-inorganic chiral nanostructures imprint spin polarization onto semiconductors. This breakthrough enables ultrafast spin manipulation, paving the way for advanced chiral spintronics and photonics.
Area of Science:
- Solid-state physics
- Materials science
- Quantum engineering
Background:
- The study of chirality and spin interactions is crucial for developing novel quantum technologies.
- All-inorganic chiral platforms are underexplored compared to organic counterparts, yet offer robust solid-state systems for chiral physics.
- Understanding light-matter-spin couplings in these systems is key to unlocking new functionalities.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate chirality-driven light-matter-spin couplings in all-inorganic chiral heterostructures.
- To explore the potential of nanoscale chiral plasmonic cores and semiconductor quantum shells for spin manipulation.
- To demonstrate a novel mechanism for ultrafast coherent spin control using transient chirality.
Main Methods:
- Fabrication of all-inorganic chiral heterostructures with nanoscale chiral gold plasmonic cores and cadmium sulfide (CdS) semiconductor quantum shells.
- Utilizing optical excitation to probe chirality-driven light-matter-spin interactions.
- Observing dynamic chirality and spin polarization induced by chiral plasmons.
Main Results:
- The structural chirality of the gold core successfully imprinted chirality onto the CdS quantum shell.
- Significant spin polarization was induced in the semiconductor due to this imprinted chirality.
- Ultrafast dynamic chirality was observed in achiral CdS shells upon optical excitation of chiral plasmons, indicating a transient chirality-driven effective magnetic field.
Conclusions:
- All-inorganic chiral heterostructures provide a robust platform for studying chirality-entangled physics.
- Chirality-driven light-matter-spin interactions can be harnessed for ultrafast coherent spin manipulations.
- These findings advance solid-state chiral photonics and spintronics, with implications for quantum engineering.
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