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  • Perspective
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Multidimensional nanoscopic chiroptics

Nature Reviews Physics volume 4, pages 113–124 (2022)Cite this article

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An Author Correction to this article was published on 22 November 2021

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Abstract

Nanoscopic chiroptics studies the spin-dependent asymmetric light–matter interactions at the nanoscale, where the asymmetry can stem from the intrinsic properties of materials, structures, light or combinations thereof. With the emergence of low-dimensional materials platforms, such as metasurfaces, transition metal dichalcogenides and perovskites, nanoscopic chiroptics has been extended from the far field to the near field, and further developed from the spatial dimension, to the momentum dimension and the integrated spatial–momentum dimension. This expansion of nanoscopic chiroptics across dimensions has uncovered new physical mechanisms and manifestations of chiral effects. It also led to applications such as valleytronics, chiral sensing and chiral photochemistry. This Perspective focuses on the progress in nanoscopic chiroptics through the lens of the associated dimensionalities, discussing the opportunities in integrated optics, photochemistry, quantum optics and biochemical synthesis and analysis.

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Fig. 1: Near-field chirality.
Fig. 2: Chiral nanosystems with far-field chiroptical properties.
Fig. 3: Chiral effects manifested in the momentum dimension.
Fig. 4: Chiral nanosystems in the integrated spatial–momentum dimension.
Fig. 5: Future developments in nanoscopic chiroptics.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank N. Zheludev for his valuable suggestions. C.Y. acknowledges the support from the start-up funding of University of Science and Technology of China and the CAS Pioneer Hundred Talents Program. C.-W.Q. acknowledges financial support from the grant No. R-261-518-004-720 from Advanced Research and Technology Innovation Centre (ARTIC). Q.-H.X, and C.-W.Q. acknowledge financial support from Singapore MOR tier 2 Grant (R-143-000-A68-112). W.D. acknowledges financial support from a Singapore National Research Foundation-Agence Nationale de la Recherche (NRF-ANR) grant (no. NRF2017-NRF-ANR005 2DCHIRAL). O.Á.-O. and A.O.G. acknowledge the generous support from the United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF). N.L. acknowledges financial support from the European Research Council (ERC Dynamic Nano) grant and from the Max Planck Society (Max Planck Fellow Program). H.O. acknowledges financial support from JSPS Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (KAKENHI grant nos. 15H02161 and 16H06505). Q.X. gratefully acknowledges the National Natural Science Foundation of China (no. 12020101003, and no. 92056204), strong support from the State Key Laboratory of Low-Dimensional Quantum Physics and start-up grant from Tsinghua University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Yang Chen, Qing Zhang & Cheng-Wei Qiu

  2. CAS Key Laboratory of Mechanical Behaviour and Design of Materials, Department of Precision Machinery and Precision Instrumentation, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China

    Yang Chen

  3. Division of Physics and Applied Physics, School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore

    Wei Du

  4. Institute of Functional Nano and Soft Materials (FUNSOM), Soochow University, Suzhou, China

    Wei Du

  5. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Ohio University, Athens, OH, USA

    Oscar Ávalos-Ovando & Alexander O. Govorov

  6. Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (IMRE), Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore, Singapore

    Jing Wu

  7. Department of Chemistry, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Qing-Hua Xu

  8. 2nd Physics Institute, University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany

    Na Liu

  9. Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research, Stuttgart, Germany

    Na Liu

  10. Institute for Molecular Science and the Graduate University for Advanced Studies (SOKENDAI), Okazaki, Aichi, Japan

    Hiromi Okamoto

  11. Institute of Fundamental and Frontier Sciences, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China

    Alexander O. Govorov

  12. State Key Laboratory of Low-Dimensional Quantum Physics and Department of Physics, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Qihua Xiong

  13. Beijing Academy of Quantum Information Sciences (BAQIS), Beijing, China

    Qihua Xiong

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  1. Yang Chen
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Chen, Y., Du, W., Zhang, Q. et al. Multidimensional nanoscopic chiroptics. Nat Rev Phys 4, 113–124 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-021-00391-6

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