Superchiral light, generated by the interference of two counter-propagating circularly polarized light (CPL) with same frequency, opposite handedness and different intensity, exhibits enhanced dissymmetry in its interaction with chiral molecules, and has the potential for ultrasensitive detection and characterization of chiral molecules. It is anticipated that the enhanced optical dissymmetry in superchiral light (SCL) field may be utilized to promote asymmetric photochemical reactions efficiency. Herein we reported SCL impart greater chiral bias to trigger asymmetric photo-polymerization reaction from initially achiral diacetylene (DA) monomer, and the enhanced optical dissymmetry for whole polydiacetylene (PDA) films could be achieved. An explanation based on the chiral transfer and amplification of chiral bias from SCL during the polymerization process has been proposed. Moreover, thus formed chiral PDA films polymerized by SCL exhibited enhanced enantioselective recognition ability, and can serve as a direct visual probe for the discrimination of some specific enantiomers.

Extending SPs and BSWs for microscopy leads to imaging artifacts, which are removed by using azimuthal rotation illumination.

Analog spatial differentiation is used to realize edge-based enhancement, which plays an important role in data compression, microscopy, and computer vision applications. Here, a planar chip made from dielectric multilayers is proposed to operate as both first- and second-order spatial differentiator without any need to change the structural parameters. Third- and fourth-order differentiations that have never been realized before, are also experimentally demonstrated with this chip. A theoretical analysis is proposed to explain the experimental results, which furtherly reveals that more differentiations can be achieved. Taking advantages of its differentiation capability, when this chip is incorporated into conventional imaging systems as a substrate, it enhances the edges of features in optical amplitude and phase images, thus expanding the functions of standard microscopes. This planar chip offers the advantages of a thin form factor and a multifunctional wave-based analogue computing ability, which will bring opportunities in optical imaging and computing.

Polymeric fibres with small radii (such as 125 nm) are delicate to handle and should be laid down on a solid substrate to obtain practical devices. However, placing these nanofibres on commonly used glass substrates prevents them from guiding light. In this study, we numerically and experimentally demonstrate that when the nanofibre is placed on a suitable dielectric multilayer, it supports a guided mode, a Bloch surface wave (BSW) confined in one dimension. The physical origin of this new mode is discussed in comparison with the typical two-dimensional BSW mode. Polymeric nanofibres are easily fabricated to contain fluorophores, which make the dielectric nanofibre and multilayer configuration suitable for developing a large range of new nanometric scale devices, such as processor–memory interconnections, devices with sensitivity to target analytes, incident polarization and multi-colour BSW modes.