A carbon atom’s four bonds normally lock a molecule into a fixed, rigid shape—but this project builds tiny molecular cages that can flip between mirror-image forms in a fraction of a second. Most chiral molecules used in drugs, catalysts, and electronics rely on rigid carbon centres that hold their 3D shape permanently. That stability is useful for transmitting precise spatial information, but it also means these molecules cannot switch between mirror-image forms the way helices or other chiral structures can. FIELD fills that gap by creating “fluxionally chiral” carbon cages—rigid frameworks that nonetheless rapidly and reversibly flip their handedness. The team will identify which cage structures allow this flipping, how to control the speed of the switch, and how to attach the cages to metal ions so the dynamic behaviour transfers to catalytic or electronic functions. This is fundamental organic chemistry. If it succeeds, it rethinks a core assumption about carbon stereochemistry. The immediate payoff is conceptual: a new class of chiral building blocks that combine rigidity with switchable handedness. Down the road, such materials could improve asymmetric catalysis—where a catalyst’s shape determines which mirror-image product forms—or enable chiroptical data storage, where information is written and read using the molecule’s handedness.
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A molecule or material is chiral if it is nonsuperimposable on its mirror image. This property is a key handle for controlling the function of therapeutics, catalysts, and electronic devices. The most versatile and widely used structural units in chiral organic molecules are sp3-hybridised carbon centres. On one hand, their tetrahedral geometry is ideal for making shape-persistent, inflexible structures that transmit 3D stereochemical information with high fidelity. But on the other hand, they lack an ability present in other stereogenic elements (helices, chiral planes, etc.) of flipping between their mirror-image forms. FIELD bridges this knowledge gap by pioneering fluxional carbon-centred stereochemistry. It develops the synthesis, analysis, and applications of rigid small molecules that rapidly flit between their mirror-image structures, undergoing fluxionality-induced enantiomerisation. FIELD establishes the ground rules for obtaining and exploiting fluxionally chiral carbon cages. It enumerates a series of molecular structures that are predicted to undergo this type of transformation, identifying ways to tune the dynamics, improve 3D differentiation between enantiomers, and connect the cages to other molecular components. Importantly, it develops ways to transmit the dynamic properties of the rigid cages to stereogenic transition metal ions, broadening the scope for their applications. The resulting stimulus-responsive fluxionally chiral complexes have properties that are potentially useful for amplifying the enantioinduction in asymmetric catalysis, and for writing and reading information with chiroptical materials. Overall, FIELD rethinks a fundamental aspect of organic chemistry by forming paradoxical structures that are simultaneously rigid cages, while also having mouldable chirality.
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