Circular Dichroism Enhancement in Plasmonic Nanorod Metamaterials

Abstract

Optical activity is a fundamental phenomenon originating from the chiral nature of crystals and molecules. While intrinsic chiroptical responses of ordinary chiral materials to circularly polarized light are relatively weak, they can be enhanced by specially tailored nanostructures. Here, nanorod metamaterials, comprising a dense array of vertically aligned gold nanorods, is shown to provide significant enhancement of the circular dichroism response of an embedded material. A nanorod composite, acting as an artificial uniaxial crystal, is filled with chiral mercury sulfide nanocrystals embedded in a transparent polymer. The nanorod based metamaterial, being inherently achiral, enables optical activity enhancement or suppression. Unique properties of inherently achiral structures to tailor optical activities pave a way for flexible characterization of optical activity of molecules and nanocrystal-based compounds.

References in corpus (7)

• Surface enhanced circular dichroism spectroscopy mediated by non-chiral nanoantennas
• Gap plasmon polariton structure for very efficient micro to nano scale interfacing
• Nonlocal Optics of Plasmonic Nanowire Metamaterials
• Spontaneous Emission in Nonlocal Materials
• Purcell effect in Hyperbolic Metamaterial Resonators
• Chiral Surface Waves for Enhanced Circular Dichroism
• Enhanced circular dichroism via slow-light in dispersive structured media

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Circular Dichroism of Chiral Molecules in DNA- Assembled Plasmonic Hotspots
• Observation of Photonic Chiral Flatbands
• Unidirectional chiral scattering from single enantiomeric plasmonic nanoparticles
• Towards maximally electromagnetically chiral scatterers at optical frequencies
• Broadband Bragg phenomenon in a uniform medium
• Feynman's method in chiral nanorod-based metamaterial nanoplasmonics