Chirality Selection in Crystallization

Abstract

A cluster growth model is proposed to study chiral symmetry breaking in stirred crystallization from an achiral element. Achiral monomers are assumed to coagulate to form chiral clusters from dimers to hexamers. Due to the stirring, the hexamers break into dimers. The coagulation of two dimers into a tetramer also occurs. The fixed point analysis of coupled rate equations of cluster densities and their numerical integrations show that the chiral symmetry becomes broken if dimers are critical and able to dissociate back to achiral monomers. The chirality selection is understood by showing that, in a quasi-steady approximation, the rate equations reduce to those of dimers with nonlinear autocatalysis and decomposition.