English

Enhanced sensing of molecular optical activity with plasmonic nanohole arrays

Optics 2017-01-17 v1 Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics

Abstract

Prospects of using metal hole arrays for the enhanced optical detection of molecular chirality in nanosize volumes are investigated. Light transmission through the holes filled with an optically active material is modeled and the activity enhancement by more than an order of magnitude is demonstrated. The spatial resolution of the chirality detection is shown to be of a few tens of nanometers. From comparing the effect in arrays of cylindrical holes and holes of complex chiral shape, it is concluded that the detection sensitivity is determined by the plasmonic near field enhancement. The intrinsic chirality of the arrays due to their shape appears to be less important.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1610.00454,
  title  = {Enhanced sensing of molecular optical activity with plasmonic nanohole arrays},
  author = {Maxim V. Gorkunov and Alexander N. Darinskii and Alexey V. Kondratov},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1610.00454},
  year   = {2017}
}