Strain turns non-chiral crystals left- or right-handed on demand

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 in Nature. ...