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Chirality in inorganic solids: from dissymmetry to functional properties

Structural chirality in inorganic solids is emerging as a key design principle for novel material functionalities, including magnetism, optics, and transport. This symposium explores its origins, control mechanisms, and potential applications.

Scope:

This symposium will explore the emerging field of structural chirality in periodic inorganic solids, with a focus on its fundamental origins, mechanisms of control, and implications for material functionality. Structural chirality has recently been recognized as a key design principle for tailoring magnetic, optical, electronic, and transport properties. The symposium aims to foster interdisciplinary dialogue across crystallography, condensed matter physics, materials chemistry, and functional materials engineering, by addressing this topic at multiple levels—from fundamental theoretical understanding to experimental realization and technological applications.

We will highlight recent progress in identifying and classifying chiral crystal structures, understanding symmetry-breaking pathways that give rise to chirality, and predicting chiral phases using first-principles and symmetry-based theoretical approaches. Experimental efforts in the synthesis of chiral materials, as well as in the development of advanced characterization techniques—such as polarized neutron diffraction, second harmonic generation, and local probes like TEM and STM—will also be featured. In parallel, the symposium will explore how chirality influences material functionality, including magnetochiral anisotropy, enantioselective transport, nonlinear optical responses, and coupling to phonons, magnons, and other quasiparticles.

A key emphasis will be on emerging methods to tune and switch chirality using external fields, strain, and interfaces, and how these capabilities might be leveraged in spintronics, optoelectronics, and quantum materials. With growing interest in non-centrosymmetric and low-symmetry materials, and the advent of tools capable of resolving and manipulating structural chirality, this symposium is both timely and necessary. It will provide a platform for collaboration between theorists, experimentalists, and engineers working at the forefront of materials discovery and design.

Hot topics to be covered by the symposium:

  • Quantification and classification of structural chirality
  • Chiral phase transitions and symmetry-breaking mechanisms
  • Chiral phonons (including ultrafast) and coupling to electronic/magnetic degrees of freedom
  • Topological features in chiral materials
  • First-principles predictions and theoretical frameworks
  • Synthesis of enantiopure and chiral materials
  • Advanced structural and spectroscopic characterization
  • Tunable and switchable chirality
  • Applications in spintronics, optics, and quantum technologies

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Symposium organizers
Aldo ROMEROWest Virginia University

Department of Physics and Astronomy, Morgantown, WV 26505-6315, USA

Aldo.Romero@mail.wvu.edu
Emma MCCABBEDurham University

Department of Physics, South Road, Durham DH1 3LE, UK

emma.mccabe@durham.ac.uk
Eric BOUSQUET (Main organizer)University of Liège

Institut de Physique (B5a), 19 Allée du 6 Août, 4000 Liège, Belgium

eric.bousquet@uliege.be
Fernando GOMEZ-ORTIZUniversity of Liège

Institut de Physique (B5a), 19 Allée du 6 Août, 4000 Liège, Belgium

fgomez@uliege.be