Plasmonic Metasurfaces with Structural Chirality and Pseudo-Chirality for Enhanced Circular Dichroism and Enantiomeric Recognition

TL;DR

This paper reports the design and experimental validation of a plasmonic metasurface with structural and pseudo-chiral features that enhances circular dichroism and enables enantiomeric recognition for label-free chiral sensing.

Contribution

It introduces a novel planar plasmonic metasurface with asymmetric gold nanostructures that exhibit strong chiroptical effects and enantiospecific responses, advancing chiral sensing technology.

Findings

Demonstrated strong polarization-dependent spectral features.

Confirmed localized plasmonic modes with polarization selectivity.

Achieved measurable enantiospecific optical responses with chiral overlayers.

Abstract

We present the design and optical characterization of a plasmonic metasurface engineered to exhibit strong polarization anisotropy under both linearly and circularly polarized light. The metasurface consists of geometrically asymmetric gold nanostructures arranged periodically on a glass substrate. Each nanostructure is formed by the fusion of three equilateral triangles. The nanostructures simultaneously break mirror and inversion symmetries, resulting in chiral and pseudo-chiral optical responses that manifest as linear and circular polarization-dependent spectral features. Our numerical and experimental results reveal clear chiroptical effects in both near- and far-field. Near-field scanning optical microscopy confirms the excitation of polarization-selective localized plasmonic modes, with spatially distinct hot-spots lighting up under different incident polarizations. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the metasurface exhibits a measurable enantiospecific optical response when coated with thin left- or right-handed chiral overlayers. The differential circular dichroism signals observed in the presence of opposite enantiomers highlight the potential of the metasurface for label-free chiral sensing. These findings provide new insights into the interplay between structural anisotropy, pseudo-chirality, and enantioselective interactions in planar plasmonic systems. Our findings highlight the ability of planar metasurfaces to emulate chiral optical behavior without requiring volumetric 3D structures.