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Chirality is a fundamental property in nature. It means that an object cannot be made to coincide with its mirror image by rotation and translation. Physicists at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) have now been able to show for the first time that there is a kind of precursor for electronically chiral materials. They discovered these materials together with the Max Planck Institute for Microstructure Physics. The results, published in the journal “Nature Communications”, could pave the way for the production of thin layers with uniform chirality, providing important impetus for the next generation of microelectronics.
One of the biggest problems facing modern microelectronics is that computer chips can no longer be made arbitrarily smaller and more efficient. Materials used to date, such as copper, are reaching their limits because their resistivity increases dramatically when they become too small. Chiral materials could provide a solution here. These materials behave like left and right hands: they look almost identical and are mirror images of each other, but cannot be made to match.
"It is assumed that the resistivity in some chiral materials remains constant or even decreases as the chiral material becomes smaller. That is why we are working on using electronic chirality to develop materials for a new generation of microchips that are faster, more energy-efficient and more robust than today's technologies," says Professor Niels Schröter from the Institute of Physics at MLU. Until now, however, it has been difficult to produce thin layers of these materials without the left- and right-handed areas cancelling each other out in their effects.
This is precisely where the new study, in which the Max Planck Institute for Microstructure Physics in Halle was also involved, comes in. "For the first time, we have found materials that are not yet chiral themselves. However, they have the potential to be converted into electronically chiral materials with only a single handedness through targeted distortion. These achiral materials can serve as so-called parent materials for engineering chiral conductors with reduced resistivity," explains Schröter.
Using modern measurement methods and precise computer simulations, the researchers were able to visualise the electronic structure of the Fermi surfaces of the materials. These surfaces significantly determined the behaviour of the electrons in the material. "The electrons form a kind of figure eight on their Fermi surface in these materials," explains Gabriele Domaine from the Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics, a doctoral student in the project and first author of the study. "When we examined a similar material with more electrons, suddenly there was no longer an 'eight'. So we were able to show the transition from 'eight' to 'no eight' in different materials with differences in electron filling."
The research team now plans to investigate the observed effects in other materials and further refine the approach. Chiral materials are the central research focus of the EXC 3112 Centre of Excellence "Centre for Chiral Electronics", which began its work in early 2026. Researchers from MLU, Freie Universität Berlin, the University of Regensburg and the Max Planck Institute for Microstructure Physics are working on new concepts for high-performance, energy-saving electronics.
Study: Domaine G. et al. Tunable Octdong and Spindle-Torus Fermi Surfaces in Kramers Nodal Line Metals. Nature Communications (2025). doi: 10.1038/s41467-025-66284-9
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