Science Daily February 26, 2020
Chirality occurs not in the structure of the molecules themselves, but in a kind of patterning in the density of electrons within the material. An international team of researchers (USA – MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Northeastern University, Cornell University, Drexel University, Taiwan, Singapore, Japan) found that while titanium diselenide at room temperature has no chirality to it, as its temperature decreases it reaches a critical point where the balance of right-handed and left-handed electronic configurations gets thrown off and one type begins to dominate. They found that this effect could be controlled and enhanced by shining circularly polarized mid-infrared light at the material, and that the handedness of the light determines the chirality of the resulting patterning of electron distribution. The same principles may work with other materials as well. Titanium diselenide, is widely studied for potential uses in quantum devices, and further research on it may also offer insights into the behavior of superconducting materials…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE