Chiral enantiomer recognition of amino acids enhanced by terahertz spin beam separation based on a Pancharatnam–Berry metasurface

Abstract

The highly sensitive detection and identification of chiral biochemical substances have attracted extensive attention. Terahertz (THz) spectroscopy and sensing technology have obvious advantages in non-contact and label-free biochemical detection, but the THz chiral spectral response of chiral biochemical substances is too weak to realize highly sensitive chiral enantiomer recognition. Herein, we propose a method of spin beam deflection and separation by using a Pancharatnam–Berry (PB) metasurface to enhance the THz chirality response of chiral amino acids, realizing the identification of chiral enantiomers of the same kind of amino acid. The conjugate spin transmittances and circular dichroism (CD) spectra of d- and l-tyrosine samples on the PB metasurface were measured by an angle-resolved THz time-domain polarization spectroscopy system, and their CD values reached 16.4° and −11.6° at a deflection angle of ±33°, respectively, which were enhanced by about 9.3 and 11.9 times compared with the maximum CD values of the sample without the metasurface. Therefore, this THz chiral sensing method based on a PB metasurface has great potential in highly sensitive chirality identification and enhancement for chiral substances.