Electric field control of chirality

Reviews and Highlights	Quantum Science	Molecular and Soft-matter	Ultrafast Nano-optics and Nanophotonics	Mineralogy and Geochemistry

Piush Behera, Molly A. May, Fernando Gómez-Ortiz, Sandhya Susarla, Sujit Das, Christopher T. Nelson, Lucas Caretta, Shang-Lin Hsu, Margaret R. McCarter, Benjamin H. Savitzky, Edward S. Barnard, Archana Raja, Zijian Hong, Pablo García-Fernandez, Stephen W. Lovesey, Gerrit van der Laan, Peter Ercius, Colin Ophus, Lane W. Martin, Javier Junquera, Markus B. Raschke, and Ramamoorthy Ramesh
Sci. Adv. 8, eabj8030 (2022).
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Polar textures have attracted substantial attention in recent years as a promising analog to spin-based textures in ferromagnets. Here, using optical second-harmonic generation–based circular dichroism, we demonstrate deterministic and reversible control of chirality over mesoscale regions in ferroelectric vortices using an applied electric field. The microscopic origins of the chirality, the pathway during the switching, and the mechanism for electric field control are described theoretically via phase-field modeling and second-principles simulations, and experimentally by examination of the microscopic response of the vortices under an applied field. The emergence of chirality from the combination of nonchiral materials and subsequent control of the handedness with an electric field has far-reaching implications for new electronics based on chirality as a field-controllable order parameter