{"id":241822,"date":"2026-07-30T00:15:49","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T05:15:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/strain-turns-non-chiral-crystals-left-or-right-handed-on-demand"},"modified":"2026-07-30T00:15:49","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T05:15:49","slug":"strain-turns-non-chiral-crystals-left-or-right-handed-on-demand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/strain-turns-non-chiral-crystals-left-or-right-handed-on-demand","title":{"rendered":"Strain turns non-chiral crystals left- or right-handed on demand"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Mechanical strain is one of the most common tools used to tailor the properties of materials. In piezoelectric materials, stretching or compressing a crystal generates an electrical polarization. In piezomagnetic materials, it induces magnetization. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) and the University of Oxford have now discovered that mechanical strain also induces chirality in non-chiral crystals, opening a new direction to control this property on demand and potentially imprint chiral electronic properties. This work has just been published<\/a> in Nature.<\/p>\n

Chirality is an important property of matter. It is defined as a property of objects that cannot be superimposed on their mirror images through any combination of rotations or translations, much like distinct left and right hands. In chiral crystals, the spatial arrangement of atoms gives rise to a specific handedness, with the crystal structure twisting along one propagation direction in a way similar to a screw.<\/p>\n

As a consequence, propagation in one direction, for example, of an electrical current, may experience different resistance than propagation in the opposite direction. This effect also influences certain chemical reactions and biological processes, which select for one specific handedness. In this sense, the ability to control chirality on demand, turning a right-handed structure into a left-handed one, is highly desirable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mechanical strain is one of the most common tools used to tailor the properties of materials. In piezoelectric materials, stretching or compressing a crystal generates an electrical polarization. In piezomagnetic materials, it induces magnetization. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) and the University of Oxford have now [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,19,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-241822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biological","category-chemistry","category-particle-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241822\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}