A collaborative research group consisting of Prof. Sugiyama from Nara Institute of Science and Technology and National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University and Prof. Sasaki from Hokkaido University has demonstrated that focusing circularly polarized laser beams into a saturated solution of ethylenediamine sulfate (EDS) induces chiral crystallization and leads to an imbalance in the generation probability of two chiral crystals. In addition, they have proposed a mechanism for enantioselectivity, suggesting that three-dimensional helical optical forces act on EDS clusters in the solution, and the direction of the helical fluid motion determines the chirality of the resulting crystals. This research has the high potential to provide new insights into the study of chirality in industrial and academic research fields and make significant contributions towards the development of novel optical resolution methods and the elucidation of the origin of homochirality.
The results of this research were published online on February 12, 2023, in the academic journal “The Journal of Chemical Physics.”

https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0186018