Plasmonic Metasurfaces with Structural Chirality and Pseudo‐Chirality for Enhanced Circular Dichroism and Enantiomeric Recognition

The design and optical characterization of a plasmonic metasurface engineered to exhibit strong polarization anisotropy under both linearly and circularly polarized light is presented. The metasurface consists of geometrically asymmetric gold nanostructures arranged periodically on a glass substrate. Each nanostructure is formed by the fusion of three equilateral triangles. The nanostructures simultaneously break mirror and inversion symmetries, resulting in chiral and pseudo-chiral optical responses that manifest as linear and circular polarization-dependent spectral features. The numerical and experimental results reveal clear chiroptical effects in both near- and far-field. Near-field scanning optical microscopy confirms the excitation of polarization-selective localized plasmonic modes, with spatially distinct hot-spots lighting up under different incident polarizations. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that the metasurface exhibits a measurable enantiospecific optical response when coated with thin left- or right-handed chiral overlayers. The differential circular dichroism signals observed in the presence of opposite enantiomers highlight the potential of the metasurface for label-free chiral sensing. These findings provide new insights into the interplay between structural anisotropy, pseudo-chirality, and enantioselective interactions in planar plasmonic systems, highlighting their ability to emulate chiral optical behavior without requiring volumetric 3D structures.