Optical manipulation from the microscale to the nanoscale: fundamentals, advances and prospects

Abstract

Since the invention of optical tweezers, optical manipulation has advanced significantly in scientific areas such as atomic physics, optics and biological science. Especially in the past decade, numerous optical beams and nanoscale devices have been proposed to mechanically act on nanoparticles in increasingly precise, stable and flexible ways. Both the linear and angular momenta of light can be exploited to produce optical tractor beams, tweezers and optical torque from the microscale to the nanoscale. Research on optical forces helps to reveal the nature of light–matter interactions and to resolve the fundamental aspects, which require an appropriate description of momenta and the forces on objects in matter. In this review, starting from basic theories and computational approaches, we highlight the latest optical trapping configurations and their applications in bioscience, as well as recent advances down to the nanoscale. Finally, we discuss the future prospects of nanomanipulation, which has considerable potential applications in a variety of scientific fields and everyday life.

Plasmonic optical tweezers based on nanostructures: fundamentals, advances and prospects

“…As mentioned above, the optical force is a consequence of the change in momentum carried by photons. However, the concept that an electromagnetic field carries momentum led to a long-standing debate known as the Abraham-Minkowski problem [5]. Consequently, the calculation of the optical force on a particle embedded in a viscous medium has followed different approaches, which can be derived by integrating the momentum flux over a closed surface surrounding the particle [5].…”

“…However, the concept that an electromagnetic field carries momentum led to a long-standing debate known as the Abraham-Minkowski problem [5]. Consequently, the calculation of the optical force on a particle embedded in a viscous medium has followed different approaches, which can be derived by integrating the momentum flux over a closed surface surrounding the particle [5]. There are several articles which discuss, in detail, the optical force calculation based on a potential or the Maxwell stress tensor approach [5,12,19,22,36,37,[41][42][43][44].…”

“…Consequently, the calculation of the optical force on a particle embedded in a viscous medium has followed different approaches, which can be derived by integrating the momentum flux over a closed surface surrounding the particle [5]. There are several articles which discuss, in detail, the optical force calculation based on a potential or the Maxwell stress tensor approach [5,12,19,22,36,37,[41][42][43][44]. Here, by employing the dipole approximation to consider the optical force, the time-averaged force is divided into three components: the gradient force, the scattering force and the polarization gradient force, and is given by the following expression [43,44]:…”

Switching of Giant Lateral Force on Sub‐10 nm Particle Using Phase‐Change Nanoantenna

“…[1] Recently, the increasing trend toward nanotechnology and nanomedicine has created a demand for applications of this non-invasive technique on the nanometer scale. [10][11][12][13][14][15] Such a strategy can overcome the diffraction limit since the optical trapping is based on localized surface plasmon resonances (LSPR) rather than propagating electromagnetic (EM) waves. [2][3][4][5] This drawback can be overcome with plasmonic nanoapertures in metallic films [6,7] and planar waveguides [8] where the nanostructures can produce a giant near-field gradient in the subwavelength area, [9] enabling precise trapping, manipulation, and characterization of nanoparticles.…”

Optically Controlling the Emission Chirality of Microlasers

“…For instance, it was acknowledged that these higher-dimensional quantum states could offer a drastically enhanced information density, both in classical 3-6 and quantum 7-11 communication channels; as well, they could allow improving the resilience against noise and eavesdropping of quantum communication protocols 12,13 . Moreover, the ability to transfer large quanta of OAM to massive objects has lead to the development of novel techniques in optical manipulation [14][15][16] and in optomechanics 17 . From a fundamental point of view, generating and entangling quantum states with such arbitrarily large quantum numbers has been demonstrated to be a very promising avenue for investigating the foundations of quantum mechanics 2,18,19 .…”