"Chiral amnesia" as a driving force for solid-phase homochirality.

The formation of a single homochiral solid phase from crystallization of achiral compounds has recently been under discussion. We show that the state of single solid-phase homochirality does not represent a more stable thermodynamic state than that of a racemate consisting of two separate homochiral solids. We introduce the term "chiral amnesia" as a more appropriate molecular-level description than "chiral recognition" to describe the driving force for establishing solid-phase homochirality in the case of achiral molecules that form chiral solids as well as in the case of rapidly racemizing enantiomers.