Self-Assembly of Chiral Plasmonic Nanostructures

Plasmonic chiroptical effects have attracted significant attention for their widespread potential applications in negative-refractive-index materials, advanced light-polarization filters, and ultrasensitive sensing devices, etc. As compared to top-down fabrication methods, the bottom-up self-assembly strategy provides nanoscale resolution, parallel production, and isotropic optical response, and therefore plays an indispensable role in the fabrication of chiral plasmonic nanostructures. The optical properties of these chiral structures can be predicted based on the near-field coupling of localized surface plasmons in structural components, which offers a route to tune or enhance optical activity by selecting building blocks and designing structural configurations. To date, three main types of chiral plasmonic nanostructures, i.e., chiral "plasmonic molecules", chiral superstructures, and chiral-molecule-metal hybrid complexes, are usually assembled, in which metal nanoparticles with various sizes, shapes, and compositions, and/or chiral molecules are employed as building blocks. Here, recent achievements in the self-assembly of chiral plasmonic nanostructures are highlighted and perspectives on the future directions of chiral plasmonics integrated with bottom-up self-assembly are presented, showing three typical examples, including chiral plasmonic switches, chiral nanoparticles, and chiral metamaterials.