A quantum chemical approach to the design of chiral negative index materials

This paper presents methodology developed for the computational modeling and design of negative refractive index materials (NIMs) based on molecular chirality. An application of the methodology is illustrated by ab initio computations on two organometallic molecules which constitute the monomer units of a chiral polymer. Comparisons with experimental data for the polymer are made. Even though the resulting chirality parameter for the pristine material is small, it is shown that negative index can be achieved by introducing sharp plasmonic resonances with metal nanoparticle inclusions. (c) 2007 Optical Society of America