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Two-dimensional crystals

Through the looking glass

Nature Materials volume 5, pages 91–92 (2006)Cite this article

A mechanism for switching the chirality of molecules adsorbed on gold surfaces offers a thermally activated approach to growing two-dimensional crystals of a single enantiomer.

Chirality is a chemical property with profound implications in physics, biology and hence medicine. An object, which may be a single molecule or an ordered array of molecules, is chiral if, like your left or right hand, its mirror image cannot be superimposed on the original. Chirality of molecules manifests itself in very specific ways, because the two chiral forms — known as enantiomers — have the same bond lengths and the same bond angles. They are only distinguishable chemically when they interact with another chiral molecule. This has far-reaching consequences in biology and medicine. Most biomolecules are chiral and therefore the drugs that target biological systems must recognize this and be 'chirally appropriate', to be safe and effective.

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Figure 1: Molecules adsorbed on a solid surface can become chiral and segregate into two different 2D crystalline domains.

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  1. the School of Chemistry, University of St Andrews, Fife, KY16 9ST, UK

    Neville Richardson

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  1. Neville Richardson
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Richardson, N. Through the looking glass. Nature Mater 5, 91–92 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat1575

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat1575

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