Hidden chirality in superficially racemic patchy silver films.

Chiral patchy particle films where morphological enantiomers exist in equal proportion are found to have significant circular dichroism. It is determined that the rotation direction during glancing angle deposition breaks the racemic symmetry, resulting in a distribution of material which enhances the chirality of one set of enantiomers relative to the other. Microscopic analysis and geometric chirality calculations reveal that the chirality of the bulk film results from incomplete cancellations of even stronger local chiralities.