Chirality conferral is fundamental for understanding the origin of life, and it is of direct importance for synthesizing new pharmaceuticals in the face of growing antibiotic resistance. Human-made, self-assembling nanostructures replicate the biological chirality conferral processes utilizing covalent and non-covalent bonds. However, chirality conferral from one form of matter to another via electromagnetic fields is more subtle and less explored. Here we report chirality conferral between gold nanohelices and achiral molecules (crystal violet). This conferral enables the experimental observation of a physical effect predicted in 1979—hyper-Raman optical activity. To benefit from Fermi’s golden rule, the chirality conferral system was designed as doubly resonant, with the nanohelices and molecules resonating at the fundamental frequency and at the second-harmonic, respectively. We provide a theoretical framework for our results that expands the original mathematical formalism to include surface-enhanced hyper-Raman scattering and the chirality conferral process. Our results demonstrate that field-driven chirality conferral mechanisms are opening up entire fields of research, as exemplified by the discovery of a physical phenomenon.

手性赋予是理解生命起源的基础，并且在面对日益增长的抗生素耐药性的情况下，对于合成新药物具有直接重要意义。人造的自组装纳米结构利用共价键和非共价键复制了生物手性赋予过程。然而，通过电磁场将一种物质形式传递给另一种物质形式的手性则更加微妙且较少被探索。在这里，我们报告了金纳米螺旋和非手性分子（结晶紫）之间的手性赋予。这一授予使我们能够对 1979 年预测的物理效应进行实验观察——超拉曼光学活动。为了受益于费米黄金法则，手性赋予系统被设计为双共振，纳米螺旋和分子分别以基频和二次谐波共振。我们为我们的结果提供了一个理论框架，将原始的数学形式主义扩展为包括表面增强的超拉曼散射和手性赋予过程。我们的结果表明，场驱动的手性赋予机制正在开辟整个研究领域，物理现象的发现就是例证。