High-speed nanoscale optical trapping with plasmonic double nanohole aperture

Abstract

Optical trapping with plasmonic double nanohole (DNH) apertures has proven to be an efficient method for trapping sub-50 nm particles due to their suppressed plasmonic heating effect and very high electric field enhancement in the gap region of the aperture. However, plasmonic tweezers are generally diffusion-limited, requiring particles to diffuse down to a few tens of nanometres from the high field enhancement regions before they can be trapped. The loading of target particles to the plasmonic hotspots can take several minutes for diluted samples. In this work, rapid particle transport and trapping of a 25 nm polystyrene sphere is demonstrated, leveraging an electrothermoplasmonic flow induced upon application of an AC field in the presence of a laser-induced temperature gradient. Using this approach, we demonstrate the rapid transport of a 25 nm polystyrene particle across a distance of 63 μm and trapping at the DNH under 16 s. This platform shows great potential for applications involving simultaneous trapping and plasmon-enhanced spectroscopies, such as Raman enhancement via the intense electric field enhancement in the DNH gap.