Tunable optical activity of plasmonic dimers assembled by DNA origami

We investigate the optical response of gold nanorod (AuNR) dimers assembled in parallel on a DNA origami template. Plasmonic circular dichroism (CD) was found to be highly dependent on the orientation of the dimers relative to the DNA axis and the inter-rod distances. Dipole-dipole distances play a critical role in the induced plasmonic chirality. The orientation dependence of induced CD was further verified by AuNR/Au nanosphere (AuNS) heterodimers. The experimental results of the plasmonic CD agreed well with theoretical calculations.