Molecular induced chirality on surfaces

The chiral properties of molecules and supramolecular systems play a fundamental role in the field of chemistry, physics, and biology. Pharmaceutical applications and food market increasingly require pure basic chiral molecules in order to improve the safety of their  industrial products. 
Standard spectroscopic and structural investi-gations on these materials need circularly polarized radiation applied to Optical Rotatory Dispersion and Circular Dichroism to chara-cterize their electronic and structural properties. Recently, adsorption of chiral molecules on metal and semiconductor surfaces and their self-assembling processes are becoming a well established field with application in non-linear optical technology and molecular recognition.
In particular, systems showing surface chirality attract special attention in chemistry and biology  because of specific selectivity of the chiral in-terface at the molecule/surface system opening important applications for enantioselective reactions in enantiomeric catalysis and sensors fields. 

Staff: Giorgio Contini, Daniele Catone, Stefano Turchini, Nicola Zema