skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.


Title: Asymmetric reactions induced by electron spin polarization
Essential aspects of the chiral induced spin selectivity (CISS) effect and their implications for spin-controlled chemistry and asymmetric electrochemical reactions are described. The generation of oxygen through electrolysis is discussed as an example in which chirality-based spin-filtering and spin selection rules can be used to improve the reaction's efficiency and selectivity. Next the discussion shifts to illustrate how the spin selectivity of chiral molecules (CISS properties) allows one to use the electron spin as a chiral bias for inducing asymmetric reactions and promoting enantiospecific processes. Two enantioselective electrochemical reactions that have used polarized electron spins as a chiral reagent are described; enantioselective electroreduction to resolve an enantiomer from a racemic mixture and an oxidative electropolymerization to generate a chiral polymer from achiral monomers. A complementary approach that has used spin-polarized, but otherwise achiral, molecular films to enantiospecifically associate with one enantiomer from a racemic mixture is also discussed. Each of these reaction types use magnetized films to generate the spin polarized electrons and the enantiospecificity can be selected by choice of the magnetization direction, North pole versus South pole. Possible paths for future research in this area and its compatibility with existing methods based on chiral electrodes are discussed.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1900078
PAR ID:
10179446
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics
ISSN:
1463-9076
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. Abstract [3+n]‐Cycloaddition reactions that employ donor‐acceptor cyclopropanes using either chiral catalysts and racemic cyclopropanes or achiral catalysts and chiral, non‐racemic, cyclopropanes have become useful transformations for the construction of carbocyclic and heterocyclic compounds, with both processes offering mechanistic and structural advantages in ring formation. Although the vast majority of asymmetric cycloaddition reactions of donor‐acceptor cyclopropanes have been performed with racemic cyclopropane compounds catalyzed by Lewis acids with chiral ligands, optically active cyclopropane compounds can serve the same role using Lewis acids without chiral ligands. This review covers the use of chiral catalysts with racemic donor‐acceptor cyclopropanes and the use of chiral non‐racemic donor‐acceptor cyclopropanes with achiral Lewis acid catalysts. 
    more » « less
  2. Abstract Over the past two decades, the chirality‐induced spin selectivity (CISS) effect was reported in several experiments disclosing a unique connection between chirality and electron spin. Recent theoretical works highlighted time‐resolved Electron Paramagnetic Resonance (trEPR) as a powerful tool to directly detect the spin polarization resulting from CISS. Here, we report a first attempt to detect CISS at the molecular level by linking the pyrene electron donor to the fullerene acceptor with chiral peptide bridges of different length and electric dipole moment. The dyads are investigated by an array of techniques, including cyclic voltammetry, steady‐state and transient optical spectroscopies, and trEPR. Despite the promising energy alignment of the electronic levels, our multi‐technique analysis reveals no evidence of electron transfer (ET), highlighting the challenges of spectroscopic detection of CISS. However, the analysis allows the formulation of guidelines for the design of chiral organic model systems suitable to directly probe CISS‐polarized ET. 
    more » « less
  3. Abstract Electrical generation and transduction of polarized electron spins in semiconductors (SCs) are of central interest in spintronics and quantum information science. While spin generation in SCs is frequently realized via electrical injection from a ferromagnet (FM), there are significant advantages in nonmagnetic pathways of creating spin polarization. One such pathway exploits the interplay of electron spin with chirality in electronic structures or real space. Here, utilizing chirality‐induced spin selectivity (CISS), the efficient creation of spin accumulation inn‐doped GaAs via electric current injection from a normal metal (Au) electrode through a self‐assembled monolayer (SAM) of chiral molecules (α‐helixl‐polyalanine, AHPA‐L), is demonstrated. The resulting spin polarization is detected as a Hanle effect in then‐GaAs, which is found to obey a distinct universal scaling with temperature and bias current consistent with chirality‐induced spin accumulation. The experiment constitutes a definitive observation of CISS in a fully nonmagnetic device structure and demonstration of its ability to generate spin accumulation in a conventional SC. The results thus place key constraints on the physical mechanism of CISS and present a new scheme for magnet‐free SC spintronics. 
    more » « less
  4. Chirality-induced spin selectivity (CISS) is a recently discovered effect in which structural chirality can result in different conductivities for electrons with opposite spins. In the CISS community, the degree of spin polarization is commonly used to describe the efficiency of the spin filtering/polarizing process, as it represents the fraction of spins aligned along the chiral axis of chiral materials originating from non-spin-polarized currents. However, the methods of defining, calculating, and analyzing spin polarization have been inconsistent across various studies, hindering advances in this field. In this Perspective, we connect the relevant background and the definition of spin polarization, discuss its calculation in different contexts in CISS, and propose a practical and meaningful figure of merit for quantitative analyses in CISS. 
    more » « less
  5. The 2D Ising model is well-formulated to address problems in adsorption thermodynamics. It is particularly well-suited to describing the adsorption isotherms predicting the surface enantiomeric excess, ees, observed during competitive co-adsorption of enantiomers onto achiral surfaces. Herein, we make the direct one-to-one correspondence between the 2D Ising model Hamiltonian and the Hamiltonian used to describe competitive enantiomer adsorption on achiral surfaces. We then demonstrate that adsorption from racemic mixtures of enantiomers and adsorption of prochiral molecules are directly analogous to the Ising model with no applied magnetic field, i.e., the enantiomeric excess on chiral surfaces can be predicted using Onsager’s solution to the 2D Ising model. The implication is that enantiomeric purity on the surface can be achieved during equilibrium exposure of prochiral compounds or racemic mixtures of enantiomers to achiral surfaces. 
    more » « less