Chirality and polarity describe orthogonal mechanisms of inversion symmetry breaking, which is the origin of valuable properties in crystalline materials including nonlinear optical activity, ferroelectricity, and piezoelectricity. Noncentrosymmetric (NCS) materials have numerous applications yet opportunities remain for cooperative coupling between chiral and polar basic building units to realize high-performance materials....
The nonlinear optical technique, second harmonic generation (SHG), is applied here for the first time to probe single and double strand DNA (ssDNA and dsDNA) chemically attached to fused quartz/water interfaces. DNA interfaces are often a critical functional component of biodetection, thus, the development of molecular biosensors requires a thorough...