Interplay of chirality and magnetism – new phenomena at the frontier of physics and chemistry

L.T. Baczewski

Institute of Physics Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland

Chirality plays a critical role in a wide range of systems, from biology and chemistry to condensed matter physics and high energy physics. We have demonstrated a new effect of magnetization switching of ferromagnetic thin film without applying a magnetic or electric field but being induced solely by adsorption of chiral molecules. The direction of the magnetization depends on the handedness of the adsorbed chiral molecules. Another important result was to propose a new method of enantio-separation based on the interaction of chiral molecules with a perpendicularly magnetized substrate. It was shown that one enantiomer adsorbs preferentially when the magnetic dipole is pointing up, whereas the other adsorbs faster for the opposite magnetization alignment. Moreover the interaction is not controlled by the magnetic field but by the respective electron spin orientations of the ferromagnetic layer and chiral molecules. This method is versatile as it was tested for different kinds of chiral molecules and allows to avoid costly separation columns which has to be designed individually for a given type of chiral molecules used presently in the pharmaceutical industry.