Giant Circular Dichroism in Individual Carbon Nanotubes Induced by Extrinsic Chirality

Circular dichroism is widely used for characterizing organic and biological materials, but measurements at a single-molecule level are challenging because differences in absorption for opposite helicities are small. Here, we show that extrinsic chirality can induce giant circular dichroism in indivi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physical review. X 2014, Vol.4 (1), p.011005, Article 011005
Main Authors: Yokoyama, A., Yoshida, M., Ishii, A., Kato, Y. K.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Absorption
Biological materials
Broken symmetry
Carbon
Charge distribution
Chirality
Circular polarization
Conversion
Dichroism
Incidence angle
Incident light
Light
Linear polarization
Metamaterials
Nanowires
Optical activity
Optical materials
Optics
Organic chemistry
Photoluminescence
Polarized light
Single wall carbon nanotubes
Substrates
Symmetry
Waveguides
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Summary:Circular dichroism is widely used for characterizing organic and biological materials, but measurements at a single-molecule level are challenging because differences in absorption for opposite helicities are small. Here, we show that extrinsic chirality can induce giant circular dichroism in individual carbon nanotubes, with the degree of polarization reaching 65%. The signal has a large dependence on the incidence angle, consistent with extrinsic-chirality-induced effects in which symmetry is broken by the optical wave vector. We propose that the field-induced charge distribution on the substrate results in an efficient polarization conversion, giving rise to the giant dichroism. Our results highlight the possibility of polarization manipulation at the nanoscale for applications in integrated photonics and novel metamaterial designs.
ISSN:2160-3308
2160-3308
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevX.4.011005