Aspects of Molecular Chirality at Metal Surfaces

Abstract Phenomena like transfer, expression and amplification of chirality in molecular monolayers are reviewed. Chirality can be bestowed onto achiral surfaces by adsorption of chiral molecules. This offers a good opportunity to study two-dimensional chiral crystallization phenomena, like lateral resolution of enantiomers or the transfer of handedness from single molecules into mesoscopic ensembles at high resolution with scanning probe microscopy. Induction of homochirality on surfaces via cooperatively amplified interactions in molecular monolayers is a new phenomenon of supramolecular surface chirality. Prochiral molecules will turn into either handedness upon adsorption, but doping with intrinsically chiral molecules breaks this symmetry and induces homochirality. A similar effect is induced by a small enantiomeric excess. The excess molecules provide the chiral bias that becomes amplified into single lattice chirality.