Public Colloquium – Bio-inspired self-assembled chiral architecture for optics and plasmonics

Title

Bio-inspired self-assembled chiral architecture for optics and plasmonics

Abstract

Chirality transfer across length scales is an intriguing and universal phenomenon. Both in nature and for application complex architectures composed of bio-based chiral building blocks are responsible for unique optical responses from colorations to extremely high g-factors. When it comes to working with naturally derived chiral building blocks, however, the challenge lies in understanding how the properties of individual building blocks relate to the emergent features of large-scale architectures and structures. Our research addresses this gap by investigating the origins of mesophase chirality in bio-derived particles such as cellulose and chitin nanocrystal suspensions. Through a combination of quantitative morphological analysis of individual nanoparticles, final architecture, and their assemblies we showcase the functionality of such chiral materials in the context of optical materials including plasmonic ones, also providing examples of how such materials can be produced at scale. 

The authors were partially supported by National Science Foundation grant DMR-1847172, by the Research Corporation for Science Advancement and by the International Center for Sustainability with Chiral Knotted Meta Matter (SKCM²). We would like to thank sarah-marie belcastro, Jen Hom, Jim McCann, Agniva Roy, Saul Schleimer and Henry Segerman for many fruitful conversations. [1] K. Singal, M.S. Dimitriyev, S.E. Gonzalez, et al. Programming mechanics in knitted materials, stitch by stitch. Nat Commun 15, 2622 (2024). [2] S. Markande and S. Matsumoto, in: Proceedings of Bridges 2020: Mathematics, Art, Music, Architecture, Culture, (Tesselations Publishing, 2020), pp. 103–112. [3] M. Kuzbary, S. Markande, S. Matsumoto and S. Pritchard, 2023.