Focused plasmonic trapping of metallic particles

Changjun Min, Zhe Shen, Junfeng Shen, Yuquan Zhang, Hui Fang, Guanghui Yuan, Luping Du, Siwei Zhu, Ting Lei and Xiaocong Yuan ()
Additional contact information
Changjun Min: Institute of Modern Optics, Key Laboratory of Optical Information Science and Technology, Ministry of Education of China, Nankai University
Zhe Shen: Institute of Modern Optics, Key Laboratory of Optical Information Science and Technology, Ministry of Education of China, Nankai University
Junfeng Shen: Institute of Modern Optics, Key Laboratory of Optical Information Science and Technology, Ministry of Education of China, Nankai University
Yuquan Zhang: Institute of Modern Optics, Key Laboratory of Optical Information Science and Technology, Ministry of Education of China, Nankai University
Hui Fang: Institute of Modern Optics, Key Laboratory of Optical Information Science and Technology, Ministry of Education of China, Nankai University
Guanghui Yuan: School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University
Luping Du: School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University
Siwei Zhu: Nankai University Affiliated Hospital
Ting Lei: Institute of Micro and Nano Optics, College of Optoelectronic Engineering, Shenzhen University
Xiaocong Yuan: Institute of Micro and Nano Optics, College of Optoelectronic Engineering, Shenzhen University

Nature Communications, 2013, vol. 4, issue 1, 1-7

Abstract: Abstract Scattering forces in focused light beams push away metallic particles. Thus, trapping metallic particles with conventional optical tweezers, especially those of Mie particle size, is difficult. Here we investigate a mechanism by which metallic particles are attracted and trapped by plasmonic tweezers when surface plasmons are excited and focused by a radially polarized beam in a high-numerical-aperture microscopic configuration. This contrasts the repulsion exerted in optical tweezers with the same configuration. We believe that different types of forces exerted on particles are responsible for this contrary trapping behaviour. Further, trapping with plasmonic tweezers is found not to be due to a gradient force balancing an opposing scattering force but results from the sum of both gradient and scattering forces acting in the same direction established by the strong coupling between the metallic particle and the highly focused plasmonic field. Theoretical analysis and simulations yield good agreement with experimental results.

Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms3891 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:4:y:2013:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms3891

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms3891

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().