An optical trap forms a restoring optical force field to immobilize and manipulate tiny objects. A fiber optical trap is capable of establishing the restoring optical force field using one or a few pieces of optical fiber, and it greatly simplifies the optical setup by removing bulky optical components, such as microscope objectives from the working space. It also inherits other major advantages of optical fibers: flexible in shape, robust against disturbance, and highly integrative with fiber-optic systems and on-chip devices. This review will begin with a concise introduction on the principle of optical trapping techniques, followed by a comprehensive discussion on different types of fiber optical traps, including their structures, functionalities and associated fabrication techniques. A brief outlook to the future development and potential applications of fiber optical traps is given at the end.
In
situ refractive index sensors integrated with nanoaperture-based
optical tweezers possess stable and sensitive responsivity to single
nanoparticles. In most existing works, detection events are only identified
using the total light intensity with directivity information ignored,
leading to a low signal-to-noise ratio. Here, we propose to detect
an optically trapped 20 nm silica particle by monitoring directivity
of a plasmonic antenna. The main and secondary radiation lobes of
the antenna reverse upon trapping because the particle-induced perturbation
negates the relative phase between two antenna elements, leading to
a significant change of the antenna front-to-back ratio. As a result,
we obtain a signal-to-noise ratio of 20, with an order-of-magnitude
improvement as compared to the intensity-only detection scheme.
Fiber optical tweezers benefit from compact structures and compatibility with fiber optic technology, however, trapping of nano-objects are rarely demonstrated. Here, we predict stable optical trapping of a 30 nm polystyrene particle using an all-dielectric coaxial optical fiber supporting an axisymmetric TEM-like mode. We demonstrate, via comprehensive finite-difference time-domain simulations, that the trapping behavior arises from a significant shift of the fiber-end-fire radiation directivity originated from the nanoparticle-induced symmetry breaking, rather than the gradient force which assumes an invariant optical field. Fabrication of the fiber involved is entirely feasible with existing techniques, such as thermal-drawn and electrospinning, and therefore can be mass-produced.
Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) has enabled single nanoparticle Raman sensing with abundant applications in analytical chemistry, biomaterials, and environmental monitoring. Genuine single particle Raman sensing requires a cumbersome technique, such as atomic force microscopy (AFM) based tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy; SERS-based single particle Raman sensing still collects an ensemble signal that samples, in principle, a number of particles. Here, we develop in situ Raman-coupled optical tweezers, based on a hybrid nanostructure consisting of a single bowtie aperture surrounded by bull’s eye rings, to trap and excite a rhodamine-6G-dye-doped polystyrene sphere. We simulated a platform to ensure sufficient enhancement capability for both optical trapping and SERS of a single nanoparticle. Experiments with well-designed controls clearly attribute the Raman signal origin to a single 15-nm particle trapped at the center of a nanohole, and they also clarified the trapping and Raman enhancement role of the bull’s eye rings. We claim Raman sensing of a smallest optically trapped particle.
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