Every age in the history of human civilisation has a signature material, from the Stone Age, to the Bronze and Iron Ages. We might even call today’s information-driven society the Silicon Age.
Since the 1960s, silicon nanostructures, the building-blocks of microchips, have supercharged the development of electronics, communications, manufacturing, medicine, and more.

Scientists have developed a novel technique to transform symmetrical semiconductor particles into intricately twisted, spiral structures – or chiral materials – producing films with extraordinary light-bending properties.