In Situ Observation of Chiral Symmetry Breaking in NaClO₃ Chiral Crystallization Realized by Thermoplasmonic Micro-Stirring

We have found that large chiral symmetry breaking in chiral crystallization can be achieved by irradiating a several milliwatts focused laser to a plasmonic nanolattice immersed in a stagnant NaClO₃ saturated aqueous solution. Several hundreds of chiral crystals with the same handedness showed up in the solution after the laser irradiation in contrast to spontaneous crystallization. In situ microscopic observation for the early stage of the crystallization in the vicinity of the focal spot revealed that microbubble generation followed by large supersaturation increase, in which supersaturation reaches 360%, promotes several numbers of crystal nucleation in the vicinity of the bubble as "mother" crystal. The generation of the microbubble induced Marangoni convection, the velocity of which reaches several hundreds of micrometers per second, crushing the first appearing chiral crystal into pieces by microfluidic shear. Namely, secondary nucleation caused by microfluidic shear amplified the number of "daughter" crystals with the same handedness. This spatiotemporally controllable micromixing experiment realized by laser irradiation gives us not only a novel route bridging a light and chiral symmetry breaking but also the novel method to observe the early stage dynamics of the secondary nucleation, which was hard to observe by conventional observation technique, in real time.