Achiral Plasmonic Antennas Enhance Differential Absorption To Increase Preferential Detection of Chiral Single Molecules.

Plasmonic antennas increase the photon flux in their vicinity, which can lead to plasmon-enhanced fluorescence for molecules near these nanostructures. Here, we combine plasmon-coupled fluorescence and fluorescence-detected circular dichroism to build a specific and sensitive detection strategy for chiral single molecules. Electromagnetic simulations indicate that a two-dimensional gold nanoparticle dimer antenna enhances the electric field and optical chirality of a plane wave in its near field.

Single-Particle Photoluminescence Measures a Heterogeneous Distribution of Differential Circular Absorbance of Gold Nanoparticle Aggregates near Constricted Thioflavin T Molecules.

The chirality of biomacromolecules is critical for their function, but the optical signal of this chirality is small in the visible range. Plasmonic nanoparticles are antennas that can couple to this chiral signal. Here, we examine the molecular-scale mechanism behind the induced circular dichroism of gold nanorods (AuNRs) in solution with insulin fibrils and the fibril-intercalating dye thioflavin T (ThT) with polarization-resolved single-molecule fluorescence and single-particle photoluminescence (PL) imaging.