Paper 13377-12
Paper 13377-12
A metasurface-based microcavity for enhanced vibrational circular dichroism spectroscopy
27 January 2025 • 5:20 PM - 5:40 PM PST | Moscone Center, Room 70 (South Lower Mezz)
Abstract
We present a combined theoretical and experimental study optical microcavity to enhance circular dichroism (CD) signals, with a focus on the fabrication and experimentation of a device. This microcavity is formed by a thin silicon film and a hexagonal array of silicon cylinders on calcium fluoride substrates, resulting in excitation of helicity preserving guided mode resonances which enhance the light-matter interactions. Optimising the microcavity's parameters can amplify CD signals by up to two orders of magnitude. We detail the design and integration of this microcavity into a vibrational circular dichroism (VCD) spectrometer and address experimental challenges. Measurements on both binol and alpha-pinene molecules demonstrate the tunability of the cavity, as these molecules have resonances in very different spectral regions. We finally demonstrate experimental VCD enhancement results on these two molecules.
Presenter
Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (Germany)
Philip Scott attended the University of Strathclyde from 2014-2019, where he got his master’s in physics. Throughout his studies, he worked on optical coherence tomography, where he investigated if it was possible to detect the origin of intrinsic optical signals within the retina through real time OCT imaging. Afterwards, he joined the group of Prof. Dr. Martin Wegener as a PhD researcher at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology with a research topic on a meta-surfaced based optical microcavity for enhanced vibrational circular dichroism sensing.