Chirality at solid surfaces has become a major topic within surface science. A low-index surface of an fcc metal such as Cu has mirror symmetry, but chirality can be imposed upon it by adsorbing a 'chiral modifier' species. Alternatively, an 'intrinsically chiral' surface can be created simply by orienting the surface such that it is devoid of all bulk mirror symmetry. Understanding forms of symmetry reduction and their implications is of fundamental scientific interest; in addition, chiral surfaces may have great potential for important practical applications. One example is enantioselective heterogeneous catalysis for the pharmaceutical industry: can a chiral surface steer a reaction towards an enantiopure product? Another is sensors: does a chiral surface show a measurably different physical response to the two enantiomers of a chiral adsorbate?A detailed knowledge of the ways that chirality can manifest itself at surfaces is essential to developing insight into how surface chirality might be exploited. In this talk, I shall discuss our work in Cambridge exploring amino acid overlayers on Cu surfaces as model chiral systems. Through a combination of rigorous experimental and theoretical surface science techniques, we are systematically investigating the relationships between molecular chirality, footprint chirality and lattice chirality. We are focussing particularly on the role of substrate symmetry by investigating Cu{311}, which has a single mirror line, and Cu{531}, which is an intrinsically chiral surface, as substrates. I will outline the insights that we have gained so far, and the further questions that are raised by our observations.

Structure of amino acid overlayers at symmetric and chiral Cu surfaces

248th National Meeting (2014)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.