Two chiroptical modes of silver nanospirals.

As an emerging three-dimensional chiral metamaterial, plasmonic nanospirals (NSs) possess inherent chiroptical activity that has attracted increasing attention for developing potential photonic applications. However, the study of chiroptical activity of plasmonic NSs is still in its infancy, especially for NSs made of silver, which is a typical plasmonic material with high plasmonic quality. Herein, we present a systematic study of circular dichroism (CD) of silver NSs (AgNSs) that are fabricated and engineered in helical lengths by glancing-angle deposition (GLAD) and dispersed in ethanol. The CD spectrum is composed of a bisignated mode of two peaks, one in the UV regime and the other in the visible. The UV mode has a resonance wavelength saturating at ∼375 nm and a linewidth decoupled from the helical elongation, while the visible mode tends to have a redshift and its linewidth broadens linearly with the elongation of AgNS. Helical elongation generally amplifies the chiroptical activity of both modes. Finite-element simulation shows good agreement with the experimental CD results, and accounts for the wavelength-related chiroptical distinction in terms of the resonance wavelength. This work contributes to understanding the bisignated chiroptical responses of plasmonic nanospirals, and introduces a simple method to tailor the visible chiroptical activity that is strongly desired to explore a wide range of chirality-related bio-applications.