Issue 20, 2017

Reconfigurable optical manipulation by phase change material waveguides

Abstract

Optical manipulation by dielectric waveguides enables the transportation of particles and biomolecules beyond diffraction limits. However, traditional dielectric waveguides could only transport objects in the forward direction which does not fulfill the requirements of the next generation lab-on-chip system where the integrated manipulation system should be much more flexible and multifunctional. In this work, bidirectional transportation of objects on the nanoscale is demonstrated on a rectangular waveguide made of the phase change material Ge2Sb2Te5 (GST) by numerical simulations. Either continuous pushing forces or pulling forces are generated on the trapped particles when the GST is in the amorphous or crystalline phase. With the technique of a femtosecond laser induced phase transition on the GST, we further proposed a reconfigurable optical trap array on the same waveguide. This work demonstrates GST waveguide's potential of achieving multifunctional manipulation of multiple objects on the nanoscale with plausible optical setups.

Graphical abstract: Reconfigurable optical manipulation by phase change material waveguides

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
06 Feb 2017
Accepted
22 Apr 2017
First published
25 Apr 2017
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY license

Nanoscale, 2017,9, 6895-6900

Reconfigurable optical manipulation by phase change material waveguides

T. Zhang, S. Mei, Q. Wang, H. Liu, C. T. Lim and J. Teng, Nanoscale, 2017, 9, 6895 DOI: 10.1039/C7NR00876G

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