Abstract
Handedness or chirality determination is a challenging and important topic in various fields including chemistry and biology, as two enantiomers have the same composition and mirror symmetry related structures, but might show totally different activities and properties in enantioselective separations, catalysis and so on. However, current methods are unable to reveal the handedness locally of a nanocrystal at the atomic-level in real-space imaging due to the well-known fact that chiral information is lost in a two-dimensional projection. Herein, we present a method for handedness determination of chiral crystals by atomic-resolution imaging using Cs-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy. In particular, we demonstrate that enantiomorphic structures can be distinguished through chirality-dependent features in two-dimensional projections by comparing a tilt-series of high-resolution images along different zone axes. The method has been successfully applied to certify the specific enantiomorphic forms of tellurium, tantalum silicide and quartz crystals, and it has the potential to open up new possibilities for rational synthesis and characterization of chiral crystals.
Highlights
Handedness or chirality determination is a challenging and important topic in various fields including chemistry and biology, as two enantiomers have the same composition and mirror symmetry related structures, but might show totally different activities and properties in enantioselective separations, catalysis and so on
The limitation of Highresolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) is that the contrast observed in images is strongly affected by the contrast transfer function (CTF), so it may not give the correct representation of the crystal structure under some conditions
Scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) images do not suffer from the conventional CTF effect, showing contrast robustness against the variation of focus and specimen thickness, and are easier to be interpreted compared to conventional TEM images17
Summary
Handedness or chirality determination is a challenging and important topic in various fields including chemistry and biology, as two enantiomers have the same composition and mirror symmetry related structures, but might show totally different activities and properties in enantioselective separations, catalysis and so on. By comparing the difference of two HRTEM images taken from different zone axes, the handedness of small zeolite crystals has been determined11. We report an electron crystallography method using aberration-corrected STEM to determine handedness locally at the atomic-level.
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