Nanophotonic platforms for enhanced chiral light-matter interactions
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Chiral, or "handed, " structures range from spiral galaxies to human hands to amino acids to circularly polarized light (CPL). The differential absorption between right and left CPL, known as circular dichroism (CD), is critical to applications spanning the synthesis and purification of pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals to all-optical magnetic writing and recording. However, differential absorption of CPL is generally up to five orders of magnitude below the absorption of unpolarized light. Recent advances in nanophotonics, the study and manipulation of light at the nanoscale, lay the foundation toward highly sensitive and efficient CD. In this thesis, I will describe progress we have made to leverage these nanoscale chiral light-matter interactions in molecular and magnetic systems using high-refractive index periodic nanostructures, known as metasurfaces. First, we computationally design a platform based on dielectric nanodisks that enhances the local optical chirality density by engineering the coupling between electric and magnetic optical resonances. These high-index dielectric nanoparticles can enable large-volume and uniform-sign enhancements in the optical chirality density. By overlapping electric and magnetic resonances, local chiral fields can be enhanced by several orders of magnitude. We show how these design rules can enable high-yield enantioselective photochemistry and project a 2000-fold improvement in the yield of a photoionization reaction. Next, I will discuss an experimental demonstration of metasurface-enhanced circular dichroism with a molecular monolayer. We fabricate silicon nanodisk metasurfaces and functionalize them with a self-assembled monolayer of dye-DNA complexes. We measure the monolayer fluorescence-detected circular dichroism in a home-built table-top polarization sensitive spectrometer; we also show how this technique is sensitive to changes in the CD handedness through double-stranded to single-stranded DNA denaturing. Finally, we extend this platform for use in all-optical information storage applications using magnetic materials. We show that the presence of helicity-preserving silicon nanodisks can enhance reflection and transmission dissymmetries under right- and left-CPL excitation, leading to higher differential local absorption and thus the potential to decrease power thresholds and miniaturize components in magnetic switching.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2020; ©2020 |
| Publication date | 2020; 2020 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Solomon, Michelle Lindsay |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Dionne, Jennifer Anne |
| Thesis advisor | Dionne, Jennifer Anne |
| Thesis advisor | Brongersma, Mark L |
| Thesis advisor | Lindenberg, Aaron Michael |
| Degree committee member | Brongersma, Mark L |
| Degree committee member | Lindenberg, Aaron Michael |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Materials Science and Engineering. |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Michelle L. Solomon. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2020. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2020 by Michelle Lindsay Solomon
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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