Inorganic chiral nanomaterials: Unveiling potentials

Chiral inorganic nanomaterials (CINMs) have gained immense interest due to their unique enantioselective, optical, and electronic properties, making them valuable in catalysis, biomedicine, sensing, energy harvesting, and optoelectronics. Unlike organic chiral molecules, CINMs offer higher stability, tunability, and enhanced functional integration, enabling their use in extreme conditions such as high temperatures, chemical corrosive environments, and radiation exposure. The field has expanded significantly, focusing on new synthesis strategies, property tuning, and application development. This review provides a comprehensive and critical assessment of the recent advancements in CINMs, covering their synthetic methodologies, chirality induction mechanisms, characterization techniques, and real-world applications. The key challenges in achieving scalable, cost-effective, and highly enantioselective materials are discussed in detail. We critically evaluate structural stability, reproducibility, and performance limitations while proposing innovative future directions. Additionally, the integration of CINMs with machine learning, computational modeling, and hybrid material systems is explored as a pathway for overcoming current limitations and driving the field toward next-generation functional materials.