Superchiral Surface Waves for All-Optical Enantiomer Separation

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel method using superchiral surface waves to achieve highly efficient all-optical separation of chiral molecules, surpassing traditional techniques in force magnitude and scalability.

Contribution

The study introduces superchiral surface waves as a new approach for enantiomer separation, providing significantly larger optical forces than existing methods.

Findings

Chiral optical forces are two orders of magnitude larger with superchiral surface waves.

Enantiomer separation is feasible on various spatial, temporal, and size scales.

The approach offers a viable route for all-optical enantiomer separation.

Abstract

We introduce the use of superchiral surface waves for the all-optical separation of chiral compounds. Using a combination of electrodynamics modeling and analytical techniques, we show that the proposed approach provides chiral optical forces two orders of magnitude larger than those obtained with circularly polarized plane waves. Superchiral surface waves allow for enantiomer separation on spatial, temporal and size scales than would not be achievable with alternative techniques, thus representing a viable route towards all-optical enantiomer separation.