TY - JOUR A1 - Rothe, Martin A1 - Zhao, Yuhang A1 - Müller, Johannes A1 - Kewes, Günter A1 - Koch, Christoph T. A1 - Lu, Yan A1 - Benson, Oliver T1 - Self-assembly of plasmonic nanoantenna-waveguide structures for subdiffractional chiral sensing T2 - ACS nano N2 - Spin-momentum locking is a peculiar effect in the near-field of guided optical or plasmonic modes. It can be utilized to map the spinning or handedness of electromagnetic fields onto the propagation direction. This motivates a method to probe the circular dichroism of an illuminated chiral object. In this work, we demonstrate local, subdiffraction limited chiral coupling of light and propagating surface plasmon polaritons in a self-assembled system of a gold nanoantenna and a silver nanowire. A thin silica shell around the nanowire provides precise distance control and also serves as a host for fluorescent molecules, which indicate the direction of plasmon propagation. We characterize our nanoantenna-nanowire systems comprehensively through correlated electron microscopy, energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, dark-field, and fluorescence imaging. Three-dimensional numerical simulations support the experimental findings. Besides our measurement of far-field polarization, we estimate sensing capabilities and derive not only a sensitivity of 1 mdeg for the ellipticity of the light field, but also find 10(3) deg cm(2)/dmol for the circular dichroism of an analyte locally introduced in the hot spot of the antenna-wire system. Thorough modeling of a prototypical design predicts on-chip sensing of chiral analytes. This introduces our system as an ultracompact sensor for chiral response far below the diffraction limit. KW - plasmonics KW - nanoparticle assemblies KW - core-shell KW - spin-orbit coupling KW - chirality KW - circular dichroism KW - nano-optics Y1 - 2020 UR - https://publishup.uni-potsdam.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/64134 SN - 1936-0851 SN - 1936-086X VL - 15 IS - 1 SP - 351 EP - 361 PB - American Chemical Society CY - Washington ER -