# High-throughput chiral copper foils by curved-surface confinement recrystallization

## TL;DR

A new method creates chiral copper surfaces at scale using curved-surface recrystallization, enabling high-throughput production of materials with tailored chirality.

## Contribution

A scalable, high-throughput method for fabricating chiral copper surfaces without relying on chiral templates or molecular precursors.

## Key findings

- Curved-surface confinement recrystallization produces large-area chiral copper surfaces with controlled crystallographic orientation.
- Chirality is confirmed through circular dichroism and demonstrated in asymmetric reactions and chiral graphene growth.
- The method allows for the creation of a library of chiral surfaces with defined properties.

## Abstract

Chiral metal surfaces play a pivotal role in enantioselective catalysis, sensing, and spintronics, yet their scalable fabrication remains challenging due to a reliance on chiral templates or molecular precursors, which limits both throughput and precise control of crystallographic orientation. Here, we report a high-throughput method for fabricating chiral copper surfaces via curved-surface confinement recrystallization. This approach exploits curvature-driven abnormal grain growth to transform polycrystalline foils into large-area crystals with continuously graded high-index surfaces. Systematic control of the curvature during annealing enabled the creation of a library of chiral copper surfaces, providing high-throughput and surface templates with defined chirality. Through manipulation of the initial crystal orientation and curvature, single crystals with tailored surface orientations can be reached. The intrinsic chirality of these surfaces is confirmed by circular dichroism spectroscopy and model asymmetric reactions. Furthermore, we demonstrate the transfer of chirality to epitaxial two-dimensional materials, exemplified by the growth of chiral graphene. This work provides a scalable platform for producing designer chiral surfaces, enabling future advances in asymmetric catalysis and chiral device engineering.

Preparing chiral metal surfaces on a large scale with high throughput is challenging due to the dependence on chiral templates or molecular precursors. Here, the authors use recrystallization by confinement on curved surfaces to produce chiral copper foils.