Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 14, 2026

09:25
Fabricating van der Waals Heterostructures with Precise Rotational Alignment
Published on: July 5, 2019
Electrically induced tunable chirality in achiral graphene metasurfaces
Applied Optics
|August 13, 2026
Summary
Researchers developed a method to control graphene
Area of Science:
- Condensed matter physics
- Materials science
- Nanotechnology
Background:
- Graphene's electronic properties are crucial for advanced applications.
- Controlling charge transport in graphene spatially is a key challenge.
- Metasurfaces offer tunable electromagnetic responses.
Purpose of the Study:
- To propose and validate a method for spatially controlling graphene's electronic charge transport.
- To investigate the use of lateral electrostatic bias for tuning conductivity.
- To design and analyze a THz frequency metasurface utilizing this mechanism.
Main Methods:
- Electrostatics simulations were employed to model charge redistribution and Fermi energy shifts.
- A delta-shaped graphene patch unit-cell was designed for a THz metasurface.
- The effect of lateral electrostatic bias on conductivity and chirality was analyzed.
Main Results:
- Lateral electrostatic bias significantly shifts graphene's Fermi energy, tuning electrical conductivity.
- The applied bias breaks the metasurface's symmetry, inducing tunable chirality.
- Chirality magnitude correlates with bias strength and can be reversed or removed.
Conclusions:
- Lateral electrostatic bias provides a method for spatially controlling graphene's electronic properties.
- This approach enables tunable chirality in THz metasurfaces for applications like filtering and sensing.
- The strategy is generalizable to other two-dimensional materials.
Related Concept Videos
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...
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
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 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...
A consequence of chirality is the need for enantiomeric resolution. While this is theoretically possible for all...
Molecules with Multiple Chiral Centers
Molecules that possess multiple chiral centers can afford a large number of stereoisomers. For instance, while some molecules like 2-butanol have one chiral center, defined as a tetrahedral carbon atom with four different substituents attached, several molecules like butane-2,3-diol have multiple chiral centers. A simple formula to predict the number of stereoisomers possible for a molecule with n chiral centers is 2n. However, there can be a lower number where some of the stereoisomers are...
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...
In chiral compounds such as 2-butanol, replacing the methylene hydrogens at C3 produces a pair of...
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. The...

