LAUSR

An optical vortex with orbital angular momentum (OAM) can be used to induce microscale chiral structures in various materials. Such chiral structures enable the generation of a nearfield vortex, i.e. nearfield OAM light on a sub-wavelength scale, thereby leading to further nanoscale mass-transport. We report on the formation of a nanoscale chiral surface relief in azo-polymers due to nearfield OAM light. The resulting nanoscale chiral relief exhibits a diameter of ca. 400 nm, which corresponds to less than 1/5-1/6th of the original chiral structure (ca. 2.1 µm). Such a nanoscale chiral surface relief is established by the simple irradiation of uniform visible plane-wave light with an intensity of <500 mW/cm2.