Episode 10: Achiral liquid crystal breaks mirror symmetry

In this podcast episode, MRS Bulletin’s Sophia Chen interviews Irmgard Bischofberger of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology about her investigation of how chirality emerges in nature. She uses liquid crystal molecules of disodium chromoglycate in her studies. When the molecules are dissolved in water, they form linear rods. The research group then forces the rods through a microfluidic cell, causing the rods to assemble into spiral structures without mirror symmetry. The achiral structure transformed into a chiral one. What is unique, says Bischofberger, is that the new material is composed of non-chiral building blocks. This work was published in a recent issue of Nature Communications.