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Thursday, March 26, 2015

Laser Trapping of Colloidal Metal Nanoparticles

Anni Lehmuskero, Peter Johansson, Halina Rubinsztein-Dunlop, Lianming Tong, and Mikael Käll

Optical trapping using focused laser beams (laser tweezers) has been proven extremely useful for contact-less manipulation of a variety of small objects, including biological cells, organelles within cells and a wide range of other dielectric micro/nano objects. Colloidal metal nanoparticles have drawn increasing attention in the field of optical trapping because of their unique interactions with electromagnetic radiation, caused by surface plasmon resonance effects, enabling a large number of nano-optical applications of high current interest. Here we try to give a comprehensive overview of the field of laser trapping and manipulation of metal nanoparticles based on results reported in the recent literature. We also discuss and describe the fundamentals of optical forces in the context of plasmonic nanoparticles, including effects of polarization, optical angular momentum and laser heating effects, as well as the various techniques that have been used to trap and manipulate metal nanoparticles. We conclude by suggesting possible directions for future research.

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