Enantiosensitive Bonding of Chiral Molecules on a Magnetic Substrate Investigated by Means of Electron Spectroscopies

Chimia (Aarau). 2018 Jun 27;72(6):418-423. doi: 10.2533/chimia.2018.418.

Abstract

The adsorption of purely organic chiral molecules on ferromagnetic Co thin films is studied under ultra high vacuum conditions by means of synchrotron radiation-based electron spectroscopies, namely X-ray absorption and ultraviolet photoemission. X-ray absorption reveals that enantiomers with opposite handedness (R,R)- and (S,S)- of two different molecules adsorb with different strength on the Co surfaces and their valence band photoemission spectra also display distinctive features. In view of the recent reports describing the chiral-induced spin selectivity (CISS) effect these results lead us to consider the possibility that some enantiosensitivity may appear when bonding chiral molecules to a substrate with an initial asymmetry in the population of the different spin orientations.