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Nanophotonic Platforms for Chiral Sensing and Separation
Michelle L Solomon1, Amr A E Saleh1,2, Lisa V Poulikakos1
1Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, United States.
Accounts of Chemical Research
|January 9, 2020
Summary
Nanophotonics enhances chiral detection and separation. Nanoscale light-matter interactions enable sensitive sensing and efficient separation of enantiomers, crucial for disease diagnosis and pharmaceuticals.
Area of Science:
- Nanophotonics and chiral molecular interactions.
- Molecular chirality in biological systems and chemical products.
Background:
- Chirality is fundamental to life, influencing protein function, cell communication, and organism health.
- Distortions in chiral molecular structures are linked to neurodegenerative diseases.
- Enantiomers, mirror-image molecules, have critical differences in properties, impacting pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals, yet sensing and separation remain challenging.
Purpose of the Study:
- To leverage nanoscale chiral light-matter interactions for sensitive detection, characterization, and separation of enantiomers.
- To develop nanophotonic platforms for improved chiral sensing, spectroscopy, and enantioselective photochemistry.
- To enable selective manipulation and separation of enantiomers using optical forces.
Main Methods:
- Engineering achiral metallic and dielectric nanostructures to enhance local optical chirality density via coupled electric and magnetic resonances.
- Utilizing plasmonic and high-index dielectric nanoparticles for optical chirality enhancement.
- Designing low-power enantioselective optical tweezers for trapping and separating sub-10 nm dielectric particles based on chiral-optical forces.
Main Results:
- Achieved significant enhancement of local chiral fields by overlapping electric and magnetic resonances in nanostructures.
- Demonstrated high-yield enantioselective photochemistry with a projected 2000-fold improvement in photoionization reaction yield.
- Developed optical tweezers exhibiting enantioselective optical force contrast exceeding 10 pN for selective enantiomer manipulation.
Conclusions:
- Nanophotonic platforms offer a promising route to highly sensitive and efficient chiral detection and separation, potentially down to the single molecule level.
- Advances in nanophotonics can overcome limitations of current chiral sensing and separation techniques, addressing challenges in disease diagnostics and pharmaceutical production.
- Future opportunities lie in translating these nanophotonic platforms for clinical disease detection and large-scale, cost-effective production of enantiopure pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals.
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