We report a new approach for creating chiral plasmonic nanomaterials. A previously unconsidered, far-field mechanism is utilized which enables chirality to be conveyed from a surrounding chiral molecular material to a plasmonic resonance of an achiral metallic nanostructure. Our observations break a currently held preconception that optical properties of plasmonic particles can most effectively be manipulated by molecular materials through near-field effects. We show that far-field electromagnetic coupling between a localized plasmon of a nonchiral nanostructure and a surrounding chiral molecular layer can induce plasmonic chirality much more effectively (by a factor of 10(3)) than previously reported near-field phenomena. We gain insight into the mechanism by comparing our experimental results to a simple electromagnetic model which incorporates a plasmonic object coupled with a chiral molecular medium. Our work offers a new direction for the creation of hybrid molecular plasmonic nanomaterials that display significant chiroptical properties in the visible spectral region.
© 2012 American Chemical Society