Ubiquitous Chiral Symmetry Breaking of Conjugated Polymers via Liquid–Liquid Phase Separation

作者：Zhuang Xu, Ziming Wang, Rui Zhang, Archana Verma, Justin Neu, Priyotosh Bairagya, Sanghyun Jeon, Alec M. Damron, Joshua M. Rinehart, Justine Wagner, Sina Sabury, Xuyi Luo, Anna M. Österholm, Jianguo Mei, Jeffrey S. Moore, Wei You, John R. Reynolds, Nicholas E. Jackson, Ying Diao · 发表于：Journal of the American Chemical Society · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.1021/jacs.5c07995 · 被引用次数：4 · 研究领域：Liquid Crystal Research Advancements、Synthesis and Properties of Aromatic Compounds、Lipid Membrane Structure and Behavior

Spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking remains a fascination in chemistry, biology, materials science, and even astronomy. Chiral symmetry breaking usually requires intrinsic molecular chirality or extrinsic chiral sources but remains rare in nonchiral systems. Here, we reveal a ubiquitous, entropy-driven chiral symmetry breaking mechanism observed in 22 out of 35 conjugated polymers in the absence of any chiral source─a phenomenon overlooked for decades. Chiral assemblies spontaneously occur through liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS) of lyotropic mesophases from isotropic solutions upon a concentration increase. Machine learning identifies the underpinning molecular features validated by further molecular design. The universality of this phenomenon hints at a possible link between LLPS and chiral symmetry breaking in the origin of life, while paving the way for an emerging frontier of chiral electronics.