近日，上海科技大学马延航团队报道了用三维电子衍射定量手性结晶粉末中的对映异构体。2025年9月24日出版的《自然-化学》杂志发表了这项成果。

手性是晶体材料的一个基本特征，它对晶体材料的性质有很大的影响。然而，定量测定手性固体中两个对构晶体之间的比例仍然具有挑战性。

研究组提出了一种基于三维电子衍射的方法对手性纳米晶体进行定量分析。他们开发了一种双重倾斜扫描协议，用于在实空间和倒易空间中收集断层扫描数据，确定绝对结构并估计晶体体积。结合数百个纳米晶体的自动串行数据收集，该策略允许高通量手性测定，以及整体对构性过剩。该方法在无机纳米晶体上的成功应用揭示了手性配体在两种对映晶结构偏置中的作用。研究组进一步证明了这种方法在一种手性药物cinchonine上的有效性，为研究非对映异构的手性有机材料提供了一种变革性方法。

附：英文原文

Title: Quantification of enantiomorphs in chiral crystalline powders through three-dimensional electron diffraction

Author: Hu, Junyi, Dong, Zhuoya, Chu, Chaoyang, Ma, Yanhang

Issue&Volume: 2025-09-24

Abstract: Chirality in crystalline materials is a fundamental feature that has a dramatic influence on their properties. Yet, the quantitative determination of the ratio between two enantiomorphic crystals in chiral solids remains challenging. Here we present the quantitative analysis of chiral nanocrystals through a method based on three-dimensional electron diffraction. We developed a dual tilt-scan protocol for tomography data collection in both real and reciprocal space, determining the absolute structure and estimating the crystal volume. Combined with automated serial data collection from hundreds of nanocrystals, this strategy allows high-throughput chirality determination, as well as the overall enantiomorphic excess. The successful application of this method to chiral inorganic nanocrystals reveals the role of chiral ligands in the bias of two enantiomorphic structures. We further demonstrated the robustness of this method on one chiral drug, cinchonine, offering a transformative approach to studying chiral organic materials when they are not enantiopure.

DOI: 10.1038/s41557-025-01950-5

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41557-025-01950-5