1. Chiral Quantum Metamaterial for Hypersensitive Biomolecule Detection
- Author
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Maryam Hajji, Martin Kartau, Graeme Cooke, William J. Peveler, Cameron Gilroy, Malcolm Kadodwala, Michele Cariello, Christopher D. Syme, Aurélie Malfait, Nikolaj Gadegaard, Affar S. Karimullah, Patrice Woisel, Unité Matériaux et Transformations - UMR 8207 (UMET), Centrale Lille-Institut de Chimie du CNRS (INC)-Université de Lille-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement (INRAE), and Institut de Chimie du CNRS (INC)-Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université de Lille-Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Lille (ENSCL)
- Subjects
General Physics and Astronomy ,Physics::Optics ,quantum dots ,02 engineering and technology ,010402 general chemistry ,quantum metamaterials ,01 natural sciences ,plasmonics ,Nanotechnology ,General Materials Science ,Quantum metamaterial ,Quantum ,Circular polarization ,Plasmon ,Physics ,chemistry.chemical_classification ,business.industry ,Biomolecule ,General Engineering ,Metamaterial ,Stereoisomerism ,[CHIM.MATE]Chemical Sciences/Material chemistry ,021001 nanoscience & nanotechnology ,superchirality ,0104 chemical sciences ,chiral ,[CHIM.POLY]Chemical Sciences/Polymers ,Orders of magnitude (time) ,chemistry ,Pharmaceutical Preparations ,Semiconductors ,Quantum dot ,Optoelectronics ,0210 nano-technology ,business - Abstract
International audience; Chiral biological and pharmaceutical molecules are analyzed with phenomena that monitor their very weak differential interaction with circularly polarized light. This inherent weakness results in detection levels for chiral molecules that are inferior, by at least six orders of magnitude, to the single molecule level achieved by state-of-the-art chirally insensitive spectroscopic measurements. Here, we show a phenomenon based on chiral quantum metamaterials (CQMs) that overcomes these intrinsic limits. Specifically, the emission from a quantum emitter, a semiconductor quantum dot (QD), selectively placed in a chiral nanocavity is strongly perturbed when individual biomolecules (here, antibodies) are introduced into the cavity. The effect is extremely sensitive, with six molecules per nanocavity being easily detected. The phenomenon is attributed to the CQM being responsive to significant local changes in the optical density of states caused by the introduction of the biomolecule into the cavity. These local changes in the metamaterial electromagnetic environment, and hence the biomolecules, are invisible to “classical” light-scattering-based measurements. Given the extremely large effects reported, our work presages next generation technologies for rapid hypersensitive measurements with applications in nanometrology and biodetection.
- Published
- 2021
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