Enhanced chiroptical properties of a hybrid material consisting of J-aggregates and silver nanoparticles

In this paper, we report on the optical activity (circular dichroism) properties of hybrid organic/inorganic structures consisting of dye molecules in J-aggregate states and silver nanoparticles. The most striking results of this study are formation of microspherical micelles in a system of interacting J-aggregates and silver nanoparticles and strong (up to 8 times) enhancement in the optical activity of complexes of J-aggregates and silver nanoparticles as compared to the CD signal from the original J-aggregates. These experimental results might have potential applications in chiral species sensing and can provide some insights on mechanisms of self-assembly of supermolecular structures and the induction of their optical activity.