Sensing Chiral Molecules Using Dielectric Metamaterial Platforms

Sensing the chirality (i.e. handedness) of molecules is critically important for biological and pharmaceutical applications [1]. However, their chiroptical response is weak, extremely difficult to tune, and emerges mostly in the deep ultra-violet part of the spectrum. Metamaterial (MM) systems have recently drawn attention, as the potential electromagnetic and structural interactions between MMs and molecules leads to a robust method of detecting molecular level chirality. In this work, electron beam-assisted, glancing angle deposited, all-dielectric, Silicon twisted L-shaped and helical MMs are utilized as chiral sensing platforms. We employ the Mueller Matrix Generalized Spectroscopic Ellipsometry (MuM-GSE) technique for real time monitoring of the chirality of phenylalanine molecules in straight through transmission configuration whereby we observe the chirality effect of phenylalanine molecules on the optical anisotropies of our MuM platforms. We envision that the proposed method based on MuM-GSE and MM platforms can pave the way for extremely sensitive chiral detector systems. 

References

[1]Kilic et al., Adv. Funct. Mater. 31, 2010329 (2021). 

[2]U. Kilic et al., Nat.Commun.15, 3757(2024).