Near-Infrared Chiral Plasmonic Microwires through Precision Assembly of Gold Nanorods on Soft Biotemplates

Directing the assembly of plasmonic nanoparticles into chiral superstructures has diverse applications including, chiroptical sensing, nonlinear optics, and biomedicine. Though soft template-mediated assemblies of both spherical and nonspherical gold nanoparticles have made significant progress, most approaches require sophisticated chemical synthesis or advanced methodologies. Besides, reports of structurally precise chiral plasmonic assemblies beyond nanoscale are limited. Here, we propose an efficient yet simple strategy to grow such precision assemblies up to mesoscale, which is beneficial for a broader community. Briefly, cationic gold nanorods (AuNRs) are allowed to systematically assemble along atomically precise, chiral, rodlike tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) particles via electrostatic attraction under ambient condition. This leads to spontaneous formation of helical hybrid microwires with high structural precision, as evidenced by cryogenic transmission electron microscopy and tomography. Resulting composite superstructures show a strong circular dichroism response at the plasmon wavelength of the AuNRs, which is supported by simulations using discrete dipole approximation. Further, chirality of the system is investigated at a single-microwire level using polarized dark-field scattering microscopy. An alternative chiral template, negatively charged colloidal cellulose nanocrystals, also arrange AuNRs into similar chiral microstructures. Thus, our report proposes a generic methodology to obtain chiral plasmonic response at the NIR region using inexpensive templates that will encourage the exploration of a wider range of nanoscale templates for creating hybrid mesostructures with emerging optoelectronic properties.

Automated summary

This study presents an efficient and simple strategy to grow precision helical hybrid microwires by systematically assembling cationic gold nanorods along chiral tobacco mosaic virus particles via electrostatic attraction. The resulting composite superstructures exhibit a strong circular dichroism response at the plasmon wavelength of the gold nanorods. This generic methodology using inexpensive templates encourages the exploration of a wider range of nanoscale templates for creating hybrid mesostructures with emerging optoelectronic properties.