Abstract
Many proteins, sugars, and pharmaceuticals crystallize into two forms that are mirror images of each other (enantiomers) such as our right and left hands (chiral). Berlinite and low quartz have enantiomers belonging to a space-group pair, (right-handed screw) and (left-handed screw). We use circularly polarized resonant x-ray diffraction to study structural chirality. Our results demonstrate that positive and negative circularly polarized x-rays at the resonant energy of berlinite ( edge) and low quartz ( edge) can distinguish the absolute structure (right or left-handed screw) of an enantiomer. The advantage of our method is that the measurement of only one space-group forbidden reflection is enough to determine the chirality. This method is applicable to chiral motifs that occur in biomolecules, liquid crystals, ferroelectrics and antiferroelectrics, multiferroics, etc.
- Received 17 December 2009
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.81.144104
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