Dielectric Tetramer Nanoresonators Supporting Strong Superchiral Fields for Vibrational Circular Dichroism Spectroscopy.

Abstract

Chirality (C) is a fundamental property of objects, in terms of symmetry. It is extremely important to sense and distinguish chiral molecules in the fields of biochemistry, science, and medicine. Vibrational circular dichroism (VCD) spectroscopy, obtained from the differential absorption of left- and right- circularly polarized light (CPL) in the infrared range, is a promising technique for enantiomeric detection and separation. However, VCD signals are typically very weak for most small molecules. Dielectric metasurfaces are an emerging platform to enhance the sensitivity of VCD spectroscopy of chiral molecules via superchiral field manipulation. Here, we demonstrate a dielectric metasurface consisting of achiral germanium (Ge) tetramer nanoresonators that provide a proper and accessible high C enhancement (CE). We realize a maximum C enhancement (CE_max) with respect to the incident CPL (CE_max = Cmax/CRCP) of more than 750. The volume-averaged C enhancement (CE_ave = Cave/CRCP) is 148 in the 50 nm thick region above the sample surface and 215 in the central region of the structure. Especially, the corresponding CE_ave values are more than 89 and 183 even when a 50 nm thick chiral lossy molecular layer is coated on the metasurface. The metasurface benefits from geometrically achiral nanostructure design to eliminate intrinsic background chiral-optical signal from the substrate, which is useful in chiral sensing, enantioselectivity, and VCD spectroscopy applications in the mid-infrared range.