We put forward a twofold enantioselective method for chiral nanoparticles using optical tweezers. First, we demonstrate that the optical trapping force in a typical, realistic optical tweezing setup with circularly-polarized trapping beams are sensitive to the chirality of core-shell nanoparticles, allowing for efficient enantioselection. Second, we propose another enantioselective method based on the rotation of core-shell chiral nanoparticles' equilibrium position under the effect of a transverse Stokes drag force. In this case, the chirality of the particle shell gives rise to an additional twist, thus leading to a strong enhancement of the optical torque driving the rotation. Both chiral resolution methods are shown to be robust against the variation of the size of the system and material parameters, suggesting it could be applied to a wide range of experimental situations, particularly those of biological interest for which optical tweezing is widely used. Our results provide alternative enantioselective mechanisms and pave the way for all-optical manipulation and enantiopure synthesis of chiral nanoparticles. In addition, they can also be applied in the characterization of chirality for testing existing methods of enantioselection.

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Trapping of microspheres with a single focused laser beam is usually limited to materials with relative refractive indexes slightly larger than one. We show that directional light scattering can be employed to optically trap high-index materials. For this purpose, we propose a material platform to achieve zero backward scattering (ZBS), also known as the first Kerker condition, in a composite media containing spherical inclusions of silica embedded in a SiC microsphere. By tuning the volume filling fraction of inclusions and the microsphere radius, stable trapping can be achieved, provided that ZBS is combined with the condition for destructive interference between the fields reflected at the external and internal interfaces of the microsphere when located at the focal point. We show that our proposal also holds even in the presence of a significant amount of spherical aberration, which is a common condition in most optical tweezers setups. In this case, achieving ZBS is essential for trapping high-index materials.

We put forward a novel, twofold scheme that enables, at the same time, all-optical enantioselection and sorting of single multipolar chiral microspheres based on optical pulling forces exerted by two non-collinear, non-structured, circularly polarized light sources. Our chiral resolution method can be externally controlled by varying the angle between their incident wavevectors, allowing for fine-tuning of the range of chiral indices for enantioselection. Enantioselectivity is achieved by choosing angles such that only particles with the same handedness of the light sources are pulled. This proposal allows one to achieve all-optical sorting of chiral microspheres with arbitrarily small chiral parameters, thus outperforming current optical methods.