Opto-thermoelectric pulling of light-absorbing particles

摘要

Optomechanics arises from the photon momentum and its exchange with low-dimensional objects.It is well known that optical radiation exerts pressure on objects,pushing them along the light path.However,optical pulling of an object against the light path is still a counter-intuitive phenomenon.Herein,we present a general concept of optical pulling-opto-thermoelectric pulling(OTEP)—where the optical heating of a light-absorbing particle using a simple plane wave can pull the particle itself against the light path.This irradiation orientation-directed pulling force imparts self-restoring behaviour to the particles,and three-dimensional(3D)trapping of single particles is achieved at an extremely low optical intensity of 10^(−2)mWμm^(−2).Moreover,the OTEP force can overcome the short trapping range of conventional optical tweezers and optically drive the particle flow up to a macroscopic distance.The concept of selfinduced opto-thermomechanical coupling is paving the way towards freeform optofluidic technology and lab-on-achip devices.