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In a 2015 computer simulation, an electric field reversed the predicted helical handedness of self-assembled benzene-1,3,5-tricarboxamide (BTA) columns. The study did not demonstrate the switch in an experiment: its authors proposed an experiment to test the prediction.
What the study predicted
BTA molecules can assemble through hydrogen bonds into long, one-dimensional columns. The molecules’ dipoles combine to give each column a net dipole, or macrodipole, along its stacking axis. The 2015 study used atomistic molecular dynamics simulations to predict that applying an external electric field in the opposite direction to that macrodipole could reverse the column’s helical handedness—its chirality.
The paper, by Bejagam, Kulkarni, George, and Balasubramanian, appeared in Chemical Communications 51 (2015), pages 16049–16052. The Royal Society of Chemistry describes the handedness reversal as a simulation prediction and says the authors proposed an experiment to test it. Read the paper and abstract at the Royal Society of Chemistry.
How the proposed electric switch works
The explanation is not that the entire column simply spins around. In the proposed setup, the columns are aligned in a liquid-crystalline phase, which constrains whole-stack rotation. The model instead describes a rearrangement within the stack:
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- An external field is applied opposite to the column’s existing macrodipole.
- The field favors alignment of the individual molecular dipoles with its direction.
- Amide groups reorient as hydrogen bonds between molecules break and reform.
- The resulting arrangement is predicted to give the column the opposite helical handedness.
This is the study’s modeled mechanism, not a directly observed sequence of molecular events. The original article is indexed as PMID 26324610.
Was the switch experimentally confirmed?
The sources cited here do not establish that the specific predicted BTA handedness switch was later confirmed. Chemistry World reported on 3 September 2015 that the team had begun work on experimental verification; that is a report of plans at the time, not evidence of a successful result. Read the 2015 Chemistry World account. The Royal Society of Chemistry also published a research-news post on 7 September 2015. Read the RSC news post.
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Why researchers considered the idea useful
The proposed switch could matter if it can be realized and controlled in practice. In the 2015 account, coauthor Sundaram Balasubramanian suggested that the stacks might serve as chiral templates for enantioseparation, which separates mirror-image forms of molecules, or as nuclei for chiral amplification from achiral molecules. Daan Frenkel, an expert on self-assembled structures at the University of Cambridge, pointed to another possible consequence: “The chirality, and hence the optical rotatory power, can be switched.” These were prospective implications, not demonstrated applications of the simulated switch.
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