Optical Nano-Tweezers Allow for Manipulation of Nanoparticles

Mar-03-14 For the first time, researchers have demonstrated a way to trap and manipulate a nano-sized object without any physical contact—a discovery that “could revolutionize the field of nanoscience.”

Optical trapping originated in the 80’s, and involves focusing laser light in a tiny spot, which creates an attractive force able to trap micrometer-sized objects. However, those tweezers could not trap objects smaller than a few hundreds of nanometers. Then, a few years ago, the ICFO researchers demonstrated that focusing light on a gold nano-structure placed on a piece of glass functioning as a nano-lens allowed them to trap a specimen near the metal where the light was concentrated—but still they could not manipulate the object in 3D.

Now the ICFO team has taken the research further by placing plasmonic nano-tweezers at the tip of a mobile optic fiber that has been engineered to have a gold aperture shaped like a bow-tie. This new design has allowed them to trap and manipulate objects as small as a few tens of nanometers non-invasively and in a simple and manageable way. The new technology could have exciting applications in the medical field and could also be used to assemble future tiny devices.

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[PHYS.ORG]

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