| Details: |
Molecular chirality is an area that has intrigued researchers across various fields due to its
relevance to homochirality, and hence the origin of life. The field of chirality has seen an
increased interest after the investigations of optical activity in materials of different length
scales, ranging from sub atomic particles to large galaxies.
1 Ground state chirality in molecules
and materials is studied using circular dichroism (CD).
1
In contrast, the excited state chirality
investigated using circularly polarised luminescence (CPL) has rejuvenated the field due to the
application of these materials in the field of light emitting devices, enantioselective catalysis,
bioimaging and spintronics.
2,3 The talk will focus on the chiral investigations of
molecules/materials at varying length scales, with a focus on nanoscale chirality. These include
non-luminescent chiral plasmonic nanomaterials studied using CD4,5 and luminescent clusters,
nanodots and upconversion nanophosphors studied using CPL (Figure 1).
6-10 Our recent efforts
to understand the mechanistic details of ground and excited state chirality induced in
nanomaterials through (i) structural deformation,
4,5
(ii) ligand hybridization6-8
and (iii)
template assisted methods9,10 will be briefly discussed. |