CAREER: OP: Ultraviolet Superchiral Light-Matter Interactions: Plasmonic Devices for Enhanced Structural Biology Characterization

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Title: CAREER: Superchiral Light-Matter Interactions: Plasmonic Devices for Enhanced Structural Biology CharacterizationAbstractNon-Technical: The human hand is perhaps the best example of a chiral object. Chiral objects cannot be overlaid on their mirror image and are fundamental to life itself. For example, amino acids are left handed and sugars are right handed. Light can also be chiral having either a left- or right-handed twist. Twisted light can interact or "shake hands" with chiral matter offering a rapid, non-invasive method for characterizing the structure of biomolecules. The first goal of this project is to advance the understanding of chiral light-matter interactions, enabling devices that can rapidly identify Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases and advance the search for cures. The second goal of this project is to engage 3rd grade and high school students in science and engineering research through videos and mini-courses related to polarized light. Beyond these efforts, this project will directly benefit graduate and undergraduate researchers through mentoring; and more broadly, K-12 students with interests in polarized light-matter interactions.Technical: Chiral objects, i.e. not superimposable on their mirror image, exhibit optical activity which manifest in circular birefringence and circular dichroism i.e., the difference in the refractive indices and absorption for left and right circularly polarized light (CPL), respectively. Structural biologist have long pursued these chiral light-matter interactions to understand the structure-function relationship in proteins. Unfortunately, traditional optical characterization methods provide low-resolution structural information primarily due to the large size mismatch between biomolecules and the wavelength of light. Nanostructured plasmonic devices can generate superchiral near-fields, which provide highly twisted light i.e., over 100 times that of CPL, confined in sub-diffraction limited volumes. Through this program, the PI will investigate superchiral light-matter interactions between fabricated plasmonic devices and biomolecules. This research will explore the energy and spatial overlap between plasmonic resonances and biomolecules in an effort to maximize the enhancement of the far-field chiroptical spectra of the biomolecule. These studies are expected to expand our understanding of superchiral light-matter interactions and lead to a new class of plasmonic devices including those used in early detection of degenerative diseases and drug design for their treatments.