Trapping and rotating nanoparticles using a plasmonic nano-tweezer with an integrated heat sink

Abstract

Although optical tweezers based on far-fields have proven highly successful for manipulating objects larger than the wavelength of light, they face difficulties at the nanoscale because of the diffraction-limited focused spot size. This has motivated interest in trapping particles with plasmonic nanostructures, as they enable intense fields confined to sub-wavelength dimensions. A fundamental issue with plasmonics, however, is ohmic loss, which results in the water, in which the trapping is performed, being heated and to thermal convection. Here we demonstrate the trapping and rotation of nanoparticles using a template-stripped plasmonic nanopillar incorporating a heat sink. our simulations predict an ~100-fold reduction in heating compared with previous designs. We further demonstrate the stable trapping of polystyrene particles, as small as 110 nm in diameter, which can be rotated around the nanopillar actively, by manual rotation of the incident linear polarization, or passively, using circularly polarized illumination.

On-chip manipulation of single microparticles, cells, and organisms using surface acoustic waves

“…Although optical tweezers have demonstrated excellent precision and versatility for a number of functionalities, they have two potential shortcomings: First, they may cause physiological damage to cells and other biological objects from potential laser-induced heating, multiphoton absorption in biological materials, and the formation of singlet oxygen (8); and second, they rely on complex, potentially expensive optical setups that are difficult to maintain and miniaturize. Many alternative bioparticle-manipulation techniques (9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22) have since been developed to overcome these shortcomings, however, each technique has its own potential drawbacks. For example, magnetic tweezers (17)(18)(19) require targets to be prelabeled with magnetic materials, a procedure that affects cell viability; electrophoresis/dielectrophoresis based methods (9)(10)(11)(20)(21)(22) are strictly dependent on particle polarizibility and medium conductivity and utilize electrical forces that may adversely affect cell physiology due to current-induced heating and/or direct electricfield interaction (23).…”

Characterization of the near-field and convectional transport behavior of micro and nanoparticles in nanoscale plasmonic optical lattices

“…[42][43][44] Excessive photothermal heating may adversely affect the microbial growth, and must be controlled, for example, by engineering proper heat-sinks. 45 The work reported here represents a significant step toward these goals.…”

Robust Cylindrical Plasmonic Nano-Antennas for Light-Matter Interaction

“…One such application is metal enhanced fluorescence imaging [10] of molecules at low concentrations where few fluorophores are available per unit volume, and a large interaction volume would be preferred to improve the measured signal.…”

“…1 are considered. Such tubular plasmonic structures have been used, e.g., as high performance biosensors (see, e.g., [9]) or as field concentrators for trapping of nanoparticles [10]. We restrict our discussion to isolated structures rather than arrays and also focus on fabrication methods such as ISL, which generate a distribution of diameters rather than a single size.…”