Chirality-Programmed Hierarchical All-Inorganic Nanostructures: Chemical Control of Symmetry, Interfaces, and Function

In this project, Professor Min Ouyang of the University of Maryland, College Park, will develop new chemical principles for creating chiral inorganic nanomaterials and understanding how structural chirality controls charge, spin, and chemical reactivity. Chirality, or “handedness,” is a geometric property found throughout nature, from biological molecules to advanced optical materials. This project will investigate how chirality can be deliberately engineered into inorganic nanostructures to control the movement of charges, spins, and chemical reactions. The research will establish a new class of all-inorganic chiral hybrid nanostructures that could enable more efficient solar-energy conversion, greener chemical manufacturing, and new approaches to information processing based on electron spin. By revealing how nanoscale structural asymmetry governs material behavior, the project could provide new design principles for sustainable catalytic technologies and next-generation functional materials. The project will also enhance the science and engineering workforce through interdisciplinary training of graduate and undergraduate students, development of hands-on nanoscience educational modules, and outreach activities. The knowledge generated through this research could further contribute to future Quantum Information Systems by enabling new approaches for generating, manipulating, and transferring spin-polarized states in solid-state materials. This project will establish chemical design principles for creating ligand-free, all-inorganic chiral hybrid nanostructures with programmable architectures that integrate plasmonic, excitonic, and spin functionalities within a single nanoscale platform. The research will investigate how chirality can be induced, propagated, and controlled across heterogeneous inorganic interfaces, and how structural chirality would influence charge transfer, spin polarization, and photochemical reactivity. Advanced nanomaterials synthesis, structural characterization, ultrafast optical spectroscopy, spin-resolved measurements, computational modeling, and predictive simulations will be combined to quantify structure-chirality-function relationships. The project will further explore chirality-induced spin-selective charge transfer and its role in photocatalytic and photoelectrochemical processes. The anticipated outcomes would establish a fundamental understanding of chirality-spin coupling in inorganic materials and provide predictive design rules for emerging quantum, photonic, and catalytic technologies. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.