Circular dichroism of a tilted U-shaped nanostructure

Opt Lett. 2017 Jul 15;42(14):2842-2845. doi: 10.1364/OL.42.002842.

Abstract

The circular dichroism (CD) effect plays an important role in biological detection, analytical chemistry, and plasmonic sensing. Tilted 3D structures can generate CD signals under normal illumination. However, fabricating tilted 3D structures is complex and expensive. In this study, we fabricate a tilted U-shaped nanostructure (TUSN) on a polystyrene (PS) nanosphere through the glancing angle deposition method. One branch of the U-shaped nanostructure is tilted by raising a sheet of SiO2 on the PS nanosphere. And the CD signal of the TUSN is enhanced because the phase difference increases with increasing thickness of the SiO2 sheet. This work proposes a method for fabricating tilted nanostructures and elucidates the mechanism of the CD effect for future research.