Table of contents : Supervisor’s Foreword Abstract Publications Acknowledgements Contents Abbreviations 1 Introduction Reference 2 Fundamentals of Chiral Nanostructures in Fluids 2.1 The Navier–Stokes Equation 2.2 Motion in Low Reynolds Number Environments 2.3 Rotation-Translation-Coupling at Low Re 2.3.1 Symmetry and the Coupling Tensor 2.4 Brownian Motion 2.5 Chirality and Fundamental Symmetries 2.5.1 Parity and Time-Reversal of Dipole Moments 2.6 Chiroptical Spectroscopy 2.7 Physical Vapour Deposition of Micro- and Nanostructures References 3 Motion of Chiral and Achiral Structures at Low Re 3.1 General Motivation 3.2 Theoretical Background 3.3 Macroscopic Arc-Shaped Propellers 3.3.1 Achiral Objects with Arc-Shaped Body 3.3.2 Chiral Objects with Arc-Shaped Body 3.4 Symmetry Analysis of Magnetized Propellers 3.5 Microscopy of Nanoscale V-Shaped Propellers 3.5.1 Magnetically Driven Chiral V-Shape 3.5.2 Electrically Driven Achiral V-Shape 3.6 High Density High Symmetry Swimmers at Low Re 3.6.1 Spectroscopic Observation of Particle Ensembles 3.7 Conclusions and Outlook References 4 Chiroptical Spectroscopy of Single Chiral and Achiral Nanoparticles 4.1 General Motivation 4.2 Novel Dark-Field Spectroscopy Setup 4.2.1 Mueller Matrix Analysis of the Spectrometer 4.2.2 Modeling Linear Polarization Artefacts 4.2.3 Spectral Data Processing 4.3 Comparison with Commercial Instrument (Colloidal Ensembles) 4.4 Observation of Single Brownian Nanoparticles 4.4.1 Chiral Au Nanohelix 4.4.2 Achiral Nanorod and -Sphere 4.5 Single Nanohelix with External Orientation Control 4.5.1 Rotation in 2D Plane 4.5.2 Spatially Isotropic Sampling in 3D 4.6 Conclusions and Outlook References 5 Conclusions and Outlook Appendix A.1 Mueller–Stokes Formalism A.2 Magnetic Coil Setup A.2.1 Spherical Trajectory A.3 Single Object Tracking—Macroscopic Body (Python) A.4 Multi-object Tracking-Microscope Videos (Python) A.5 Differential Dynamic Microscopy (Matlab) References