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Bow-tie particles boast a tunable twist

Particles that self-assemble from nanoribbons into bow-tie-shaped structures can be tailored to change the degree of their twist. A search for how best to quantify this twist homes in on a measure of how the bow ties respond to light.
  1. Bart Kahr

    1. Bart Kahr is in the Department of Chemistry and the Molecular Design Institute, New York University, New York, New York 10003, USA.

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Molecules are said to be chiral if their geometry takes two forms that are non-superimposable mirror images of each other, manifesting in differences that can be observed in chemical and physical experiments. In 1890, Swiss chemist Philippe-Auguste Guye first posed the question: are some molecules more chiral than others1? Chemists have since felt a recurrent itch to quantify the degree of chirality — to establish how much a chiral compound differs from its mirror image, and to determine how this measure relates to experiments2. In this spirit, writing in Nature, Kumar et al.3 report that the geometry of twisted bow-tie-shaped particles can be tuned continuously, and can be characterized using a chirality index that points to possible applications in remote sensing.

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Nature 615, 395-396 (2023)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-00705-x

References

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Competing Interests

The author declares no competing interests.

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