Chirality and chiroptical effects in inorganic nanocrystal systems with plasmon and exciton resonances

Abstract

This paper reviews the recent advances in experiment and theory of the induction of chiroptical effects, primarily circular dichroism (CD), at the plasmonic and excitonic resonances of achiral inorganic nanocrystals (NCs) capped and/or formed with chiral molecules. It also addresses stronger chiroptical effects obtained in intrinsically chiral inorganic nanostructures obtained from growing enantiomeric excess of intrinsically chiral NCs or arranging achiral plasmonic particles in chiral configurations. The accumulated experimental data and theory on various CD induction mechanisms provide an extended set of tools to properly analyze and understand the electromagnetic influence of chiral molecules on inorganic particles and obtain new general insights into the interaction of capping molecules with inorganic NCs. Among the field-induced CD mechanisms developed recently one can name the Coulomb (near-field, dipolar) mechanism for nanostructures much smaller than the wavelength, and for larger nanostructures, the electromagnetic (effective chiral medium), and intrinsically chiral plasmonic mechanisms.