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As it happens, many aspects of life exhibit chirality, or “handedness.”

Chirality in molecules means they have a specific orientation in space such that the mirror image of the molecule in question cannot be perfectly superimposed on the original.

So if you were to engineer synthetic mirror image versions of these, the amino acids would have right-handed chirality and the DNA would have left-handed chirality.

Specifically, they found that by introducing chirality into the organic layers -- i.e., making the carbon chains in those layers asymmetrical -- they could effectively maintain the same stiffness and thermal conductivity even when making substantial changes to the composition of the organic layers.

Now, researchers at Penn State have made the material potentially more useful by imparting chirality -- or handedness -- on it, which could make for advanced sensors and implantable medical devices.