Right- and Left-handed Molecules?

David Waldeck

Many molecules and materials in the natural world are not superimposable on their mirror image, like your left and right hands. This property is called chirality. 

David Waldeck, professor of chemistry in Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, has earned a five-year, $7.5 million Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative award from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research to better understand and harness the ways in which the spin of electrons interacts with the handedness of molecules. Although the charge of an electron is widely known, electrons also act like spinning tops. Waldeck has shown that the spin of an electron (clockwise or counterclockwise) affects how it moves through chiral molecules.

Waldeck is leading a team of researchers from half a dozen universities across the United States to develop theoretical models of this phenomenon and to learn how the electron’s spin and a molecule’s (or catalyst’s) chirality can be used to improve the efficiency and selectivity of chemical and biochemical reactions.