Photon carries orbital angular momentum (OAM), which manifests as a helical phase distribution in the wavefront. Because of its unique optical field distribution and physically-unbounded OAM state, OAM beam plays an important role in super-resolution imaging, high-density data coding and other fields. The study on the new mechanisms of OAM beam-matter interaction at nano structures is expected to provide new ideas and methods for the fields of modern photonic devices and multidimensional light-matter interaction. The applications of OAM beams in multidimensional multiplexing as well as the detection technologies of OAM topological charges developed by the authors’ group are reviewed, and an outlook onthe application of OAM beams at nanoscale is also presented.