Abstract
Optical chirality is central to many industrial photonic technologies including enantiomer identification, ellipsometry-based tomography, and spin multiplexing in optical communications. However, a substantial chiral response requires a three-dimensional constituent, thereby making the morphology highly complex to realize structural reconfiguration. Moreover, an active reconfiguration demands intense dosage of external stimuli that pose a major limitation for on-chip integration. Here, we report a low bias, electrically programmable synthetic chiral paradigm with a remarkable reconfiguration among levorotatory, dextrorotatory, achiral, and racemic conformations. The switchable optical activity induced by the chiral conformations enables a transmission-type duplex spatial light modulator for terahertz single pixel imaging. The prototype delivers a new strategy towards reconfigurable stereoselective photonic applications and opens up avenues for on-chip programmable chiral devices with tremendous applications in biology, medicine, chemistry, and photonics.
Highlights
Chirality is ubiquitous in nature from human hands to chemical and biological macromolecules and climbing plants
We demonstrate a duplex spatial light modulator utilizing the polarization-dependent intensity modulation for terahertz single pixel imaging with a faster frame rate by virtue of the dual-band chirality
The proposed chiral scheme enabled by bimorph cantilever offers an extremely simple artificial platform, and it is the simplified microhelix configuration that makes it possible to realize structural reconfiguration with a remarkably weak actuation voltage
Summary
Chirality is ubiquitous in nature from human hands to chemical and biological macromolecules and climbing plants. The CD response of natural enantiomers is extremely weak, typically in the range of millidegrees and large volume (submillilitre) of analyte is required with a long integration time (∼30 min) to precisely resolve the chirality [4]. Several solutions have been reported to overcome the detection limit of naturally weak CD response by integrating with chiral metamaterials [5,6,7,8,9,10]. An ingenious sensing scheme by virtue of synthetic chiral metamaterials could lead to a better detection accuracy of enantiomer handedness. Synthetic chirality is significant for the determination of enantioselective activity in biochemical reactions, and for exceptional lightmanipulation capabilities, including polarization control and detection [11,12,13], negative refractive index [14], perfect lens [15], and color-tunable polarizer [5]. Metamaterials, with artificially constructed building blocks, enable extraordinary chiral optical responses and, provide the freedom to actively reverse the polarity of chirality
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