Direct Quantification of Molecular Helicity-Dependent Effective Magnetic Fields in Chiral Polypeptide/Ferromagnet Heterostructures
Chirality-Induced Spin Selectivity (CISS) refers to structural chirality governing spin transport in chiral systems, with experimental signatures reported in both transport experiments and photoemission. Beyond influencing transport, recent experiments indicate that adsorbed chiral molecules can influence the magnetic state of adjacent ferromagnetic layers, suggesting the existence of chirality-induced effects whose origin and quantitative characterization remain lacking. Here, we investigate chirality-induced long-range magnetic interactions in a hybrid molecular/ferromagnetic multilayer beyond the conventional direct transport coupling. We demonstrate the long-range nature by decoupling the adsorbed chiral molecules from the magnet using an insulating spacer. We show that self-assembled monolayers of chiral polypeptides with a helical structure can act on a ferromagnetic multilayer via an enantiomer-dependent effective magnetic field that may be mediated by chiral phonons through the insulating layer. Using Magneto-Optical Kerr Effect (MOKE) microscopy with on-chip reference regions free of molecules, we directly quantify this field by measuring precisely the reproducible shifts of the local hysteresis loops. The extracted effective field reverses sign for opposite enantiomers and correlates with the enantiomeric excess. These results provide a direct and quantitative link between molecular chirality and magnetic response in hybrid heterostructures, establishing an experimentally accessible benchmark for a CISS-related effect.