Enantioselective optical trapping and characterization of all dielectric disorder-enabled chiral particles

We trap submicroscopic silica spheres coated with randomly distributed titanium dioxide nanoparticles in optical tweezers with Laguerre-Gaussian modes and observe orbital dynamics that differ from those of achiral silica spheres.

We show that the disordered nanoparticle coating generates an effective chiral geometry, giving rise to enhanced enantioselective chiral optical forces and a measurable modification of the orbital period.

A theoretical model based on the Mie-Debye formalism, including optical aberrations, not only quantitatively explains the experimental results but also allows to characterize the Pasteur parameter quantifying the chiroptical response of individual composite particles.

These findings constitute direct experimental evidence of chiral optical forces exerted by structured light beams on individual chiral particles and identify disorder-enabled, all-dielectric particles as a versatile material platform to tailor chiral optical forces at the nanoscale.