UCLA

Spin-selective interactions between electrons and chiral molecules, described collectively by the chiral-induced spin selectivity (CISS) effect, have garnered increasing attention. The history of this burgeoning field, the predominant experimental techniques that have been employed to study the CISS effect, and the state of theoretical efforts to model this unexpected behavior are briefly reviewed. Herein, we demonstrate the use of ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy – a widely accessible and broadly applicable technique – to characterize the CISS effect in photoemission from self-assembled monolayers of peptides and proteins on ferromagnetic substrates. We subsequently report that the magnitude of the CISS effect in self-assembled monolayers of DNA can be enhanced through incorporation of heavy coordinating species within the chiral molecular framework, and moreover that the sign of the effect can be reversed by inverting the DNA molecular handedness. The relevance of the CISS effect as it pertains to both the development of highly effective room-temperature spintronic devices and to the elucidation of the origins of biomolecular homochirality and chirality dependent biochemical reactivity are discussed.