Light‐Imprinted Chirality in Nanomaterials: From Principles to Applications

Light-induced chirality represents a transformative paradigm for fabricating chiral nanostructures, offering unique advantages over traditional approaches including chemical synthesis, self-assembly, and lithography. This review provides a comprehensive framework encompassing light-based strategies for imprinting and tuning chirality in nanomaterials, which includes laser direct writing, optical manipulation, CPL-induced symmetry breaking with the assistance of surface plasmons, optical vortex structuring, and momentum transfer. We critically compare different optical approaches, providing clear selection guidelines based on resolution, scalability, material compatibility, and equipment requirements. We also examine dynamic light-modulated chirality for switchable and reconfigurable structures, and highlight their emerging applications in biomedicine, sensing, polarization optics, and chiral displays. Finally, we conclude this review with current challenges and future directions. By establishing light-induced chirality as the most promising route for scalable chiral nanofabrication, this review guides researchers in harnessing light to create next-generation functional materials.

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Publication Details

Journal
Advanced Science
Published
2026-07-30
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1002/advs.202524331
Primary Topic
Metamaterials and Metasurfaces Applications
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00

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article

Light‐Imprinted Chirality in Nanomaterials: From Principles to Applications

Tao Ding, Emiliano Cortés, Alexander O. Govorov, Xinru Jin
Advanced Science
Metamaterials and Metasurfaces Applications
article

Light‐Imprinted Chirality in Nanomaterials: From Principles to Applications

Tao Ding, Emiliano Cortés, Alexander O. Govorov, Xinru Jin
article en

Abstract

Light-induced chirality represents a transformative paradigm for fabricating chiral nanostructures, offering unique advantages over traditional approaches including chemical synthesis, self-assembly, and lithography. This review provides a comprehensive framework encompassing light-based strategies for imprinting and tuning chirality in nanomaterials, which includes laser direct writing, optical manipulation, CPL-induced symmetry breaking with the assistance of surface plasmons, optical vortex structuring, and momentum transfer. We critically compare different optical approaches, providing clear selection guidelines based on resolution, scalability, material compatibility, and equipment requirements. We also examine dynamic light-modulated chirality for switchable and reconfigurable structures, and highlight their emerging applications in biomedicine, sensing, polarization optics, and chiral displays. Finally, we conclude this review with current challenges and future directions. By establishing light-induced chirality as the most promising route for scalable chiral nanofabrication, this review guides researchers in harnessing light to create next-generation functional materials.

Advanced Science
Wuhan University of Technology (CN), Ohio University (US), Wuhan University of Science and Technology (CN), Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (DE)
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, National Natural Science Foundation of China, National Key Research and Development Program of China
Quality Education
Openalex Percentile: Top 23%
Metamaterials and Metasurfaces Applications
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