Smart hydrogels are one kind of soft materials adopting water as the dispersion medium

which could respond to the external changes in the surrounding environment

such as temperature

pH value

pressure

solvent

light or electric/magnetic field

and further induce reversibly continuous or discontinuous volume phase transitions by absorbing or squeezing several-fold water out of themselves.In recent years

chiral hydrogel emerges as a new research field and will find broad applications in chiral recognition

enantiomeric separation

controlled drug release and microfluid devices

which have become one of the research focuses in the interdisciplinary fields among material sciences

chemistry and biomedicines.However

how to obtain chiral hydrogels with sensitive and accurate responsiveness

well-defined nano- and micro-structures

as well as the controllable formation process

have become the critical points of research.In this review

recent progresses in chiral hydrogels are summarized

including various preparation methods to construct polymer hydrogels with three-dimensional network structures or small molecular hydrogels with helical structures

as well as some vagarious gel formation process in which chirality is transferred from singular molecules to nanoscale architectures and macroscopic behavior of hydrogels.Finally

the applications and tendency of future development of these materials are introduced.