Co-occurrence of linear and circular dichroism in chiral sculptured ZrO₂ thin films

Three dimensional chiral metamaterials, have unique helical shaped morphologies and periodically varying permittivity, possess inherent fascinatingly chiroptical activity in developing potential photonic applications. Herein, we demonstrate a systemic simulations of optical activity in chiral sculptured thin films (CSTFs) made of ZrO₂. In particular, a circular dichroism (CD) and linear dichroism (LD) are scrutinized for the proposed ZrO₂ CSTFs. From the calculated differential absorption, LD and CD spectrum is computed using linear and circular polarized light beams respectively. The signated mode of different peaks for LD and CD is observed at different sweep angles with a large LD effect. Moreover, the CD diminishes at large sweep angle. This finding strongly indicates high potential of our proposed helical ZrO₂ nanostructures as a perfect polarization converter. Simultaneously, optical remittance of different helical nanostructures are also compared.