Diffraction Gratings for Chiral Molecules and Their Applications

Robert Peter Cameron, Alison Yao, and Stephen Barnett

We suggest the use of certain readily producible types of light to exert a force that points in opposite directions for the enantiomers of a chiral molecule and propose multiple devices based upon this novel manifestation of optical activity: in particular, our ‘discriminatory chiral diffraction grating’; a device that could be employed, for example, to measure the enantiomeric excess of a sample of chiral molecules simply and to high precision. Our work is relevant for many types of molecule and our proposed devices may be realisable using currently existing technology.

DOI