Enhancement and Sensing Application of Ultra-Narrowband Circular Dichroism in the Chiral Nanostructures Based on Monolayer MoS2 and a Distributed Bragg Reflector.

Abstract

Narrowband circular dichroism (CD) has aroused wide concerns in high-sensitivity detections of chiral molecular and chiral catalysis. Nevertheless, the dynamical adjustment of ultra-narrowband (UNB) CD signals is hard to achieve. In this work, single-layer molybdenum disulfide (MoS2), vanadium dioxide (VO2), and a distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) are introduced into X-shaped chiral nanostructures (XCNs) for overcoming the above challenge. The simulation results show that XCNs can generate four strong UNB CD signals in the near-infrared band, and XCNs/MoS2 can further enhance the UNB CD signals. The full width at half-minimum of UNB CD signals can reach 0.14 nm. The electric field distributions of XCNs/MoS2 show that the four CD signals originate from the coupling between the guided mode resonances along the x and y axes in the VO2 layer and the Tamm plasmon polaritons along the x and y axes in the DBR layer. Four UNB CD peaks can be actively tuned by varying the structural parameters, the number of MoS2 layers, and the environmental temperature. The FOM of XCNs/MoS2 can reach 1487 by changing the refractive index of the DRB layers. These findings contribute to the design of UNB chiral devices and provide new possibilities for environmental monitoring and ultrasensitive detection of chiral molecules.