Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 14, 2026

Fabricating van der Waals Heterostructures with Precise Rotational Alignment
Published on: July 5, 2019
Electrically induced tunable chirality in achiral graphene metasurfaces
Abstract:
A method for spatially controlling the electronic charge transport properties of graphene is proposed via the use of a lateral electrostatic bias field. The method is shown via electrostatics simulations to produce considerable shifts in the graphene Fermi energy, which in-turn tunes the electrical conductivity. This mechanism is incorporated into a THz frequency metasurface design consisting of a patterned graphene unit-cell (a delta-shaped graphene patch) which exhibits one axis of symmetry. Upon application of the lateral electrostatic bias, the charge redistribution in the graphene spatially alters the electrical conductivity of the monolayer, thereby breaking the symmetry of the system and introducing chirality. The magnitude of the chirality increases with the magnitude of the lateral electrostatic bias, or can be reversed by changing the sign of the bias field. Further, the response can be removed by the removal of the bias field, thereby returning to a achiral system. In addition to enabling filtering and sensing of circularly polarized light, this lateral biasing strategy offers a general route for spatially controlling charge carrier properties in graphene and other two-dimensional materials.
Related Concept Videos
Chirality
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
Chirality at Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Sulfur
A consequence of chirality is the need for enantiomeric resolution. While this is theoretically possible for all...
Molecules with Multiple Chiral Centers
¹H NMR Chemical Shift Equivalence: Enantiotopic and Diastereotopic Protons
In chiral compounds such as 2-butanol, replacing the methylene hydrogens at C3 produces a pair of...
Chirality in Nature

