Engineering Asymmetry: How Chirality Boosts Catalysis, Spin Selectivity, and Light–Matter Interactions

Abstract

Chirality is one of nature's fundamental properties and has lately evolved into a quantitative framework for describing how matter interacts with photons, electrons, and spin. Latest discoveries show that molecular handedness dictates electron transport, energy flow, and reactivity, with efficiencies that surpass achiral counterparts. Moving from molecular chirality to chiral materials, such as polycrystalline films, metal-organic frameworks, and perovskites, converts local stereochemistry into macroscopic optical and electronic phenomena via cooperative coupling. In this context, circularly polarized light is a fundamental tool that not only probes chirality via chiroptical techniques but can also be utilized to enhance asymmetry and enable unique functionality, including spin-polarized charge transfer, enantioselective polymerization, and chiral phototherapy. More recent findings further show that, for solid chiral systems, the highest chiroptical responses, which qualitatively correlate with their chirality-related performance, often emerge at scalemic, not enantiopure mixtures, providing a new control parameter for chiral material design. This review unifies different facets of chirality by integrating related advances in spectroscopy, catalysis, and spintronics and delineating how electric–magnetic dipole orientation governs observable functionality in chiral systems.