Absolute Chiral Sensing in Dielectric Metasurfaces Using Signal Reversals.

Abstract

Sensing molecular chirality at the nanoscale has been a long-standing challenge due to the inherently weak nature of chiroptical signals, and nanophotonic approaches have proven fruitful in accessing these signals. However, in most cases, complete sensing of the chiral part of the molecule's refractive index (magnitude and sign of both its real and imaginary part) has not been possible, while the strong inherent signals from the nanostructures themselves obscure the weak chiroptical signals. Here, we propose a dielectric metamaterial system that overcomes these limitations and allows for complete measurements of the total chirality and discrimination of the effects of its real and imaginary part, possible also in an absolute manner via the application of a crucial signal reversal (excitation with reversed polarization) that enables chirality measurements without the need for sample removal. As proof of principle, we demonstrate signal enhancements by a factor of 200 for ultrathin, subwavelength, chiral samples over a uniform and accessible area.