Experimental and Theoretical Observation of Photothermal Chirality in Gold Nanoparticle Helicoids

Single-particle spectroscopy is central to the characterization of plasmonic nanostructures and understanding of light-matter interactions in chiral nanosystems. Although chiral plasmonic nanostructures are generally characterized by their circular differential extinction and scattering, single-particle absorption studies can extend our understanding of light-matter interactions. Here, we introduce an experimental observation of photothermal chirality which originated from circular differential absorption of chiral plasmonic nanostructures. Using luminescence ratio thermometry, we identify the optical and photothermal handedness and an absolute temperature difference of 6 K under the right and left circularly polarized light. We observe a circular differential extinction parameter (g_ext) of -0.13 in colloidally prepared gold helicoids and compare our findings with numerical simulations using finite element methods. The simulated data showed that circular differential absorption and the maximum temperature of a small cluster of helical nanoparticles are polarization-dependent. We observed an intensity-dependent photothermal g-factor from chiral helicoids that decreases slightly at higher temperatures. We also measure a range of optical g-factors from several gold helicoids, which are attributed to the heterogeneity of helicoids in nanoparticles during synthesis. The principles of differential photothermal response of chiral nanomaterials and heat generation described here can be potentially used for thermal photocatalysis, energy conversion, and electronic applications.