Characterization of chiral mesoporous materials by transmission electron microscopy.

By using transmission electron microscopy (TEM), the chirality of novel mesoporous materials has been studied. In addition, a computer simulation that uses a simple structural model was employed. The existence of chiral channels inside a tubelike material was confirmed by the observation of fringes along the length of the tubes. The chiral pitch of the channels was measured from the intermittent period, the chirality (right- or left-handed) was determined from the tilt direction of a tube compared with the direction of incident electrons and the curvature direction of the curved intermitted fringes as viewed in the TEM images.