Fabrication of quartz microcylinders by laser interference lithography for angular optical tweezers

Zhanna Santybayeva ; Afaf Meghit ; Rudy Desgarceaux ; Roland Teissier ; Frederic Pichot ; Charles de Marin ; Benoit Charlot ; Francesco Pedaci

The use of optical tweezers (OTs) and spin angular momentum transfer to birefringent particles allows new mechanical measurements in systems where torque and rotation are relevant parameters at the single-molecule level. There is a growing interest in developing simple, fast, and inexpensive protocols to produce a large number of submicron scale cylinders of quartz, a positive uniaxial birefringent crystal, to be employed for such angular measurements in OTs. Here, we show that laser interference lithography, a method well known for its simplicity, fulfills these requirements and produces quartz cylindrical particles that we successfully use to apply and measure optical torque in the piconewton nm range in an optical torque wrench.

DOI