title: Towards nano-optical tweezers with graphene plasmons: Numerical investigation of trapping 10-nm particles with mid-infrared light.
abstract: Graphene plasmons are rapidly emerging as a versatile platform for manipulating light at the deep subwavelength scale. Here we show numerically that strong optical near-field forces can be generated under the illumination of mid-IR light when dielectric nanoparticles are located in the vicinity of a nanostructured graphene film. These near-field forces are attributed to the excitation of the graphene's plasmonic mode. The optical forces can generate an efficient optical trapping potential for a 10-nm-diameter dielectric particle when the light intensity is only about about 4.4 mW/μm2and provide possibilities for a new type of plasmonic nano-tweezers. Graphene plasmonic tweezers can be potentially exploited for optical manipulation of nanometric biomolecules and particles. Moreover, the optical trapping/tweezing can be combined with biosensing and provide a versatile platform for studing biology and chemistry with mid-IR light.
authors.affiliation: College of Optoelectronic Science and Engineering, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha 410073, China.
authors.forename: Jianfa
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: College of Optoelectronic Science and Engineering, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha 410073, China.
authors.forename: Wenbin
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: College of Optoelectronic Science and Engineering, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha 410073, China.|State Key Laboratory of High Performance Computing, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, 410073, China.
authors.forename: Zhihong
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.affiliation: College of Optoelectronic Science and Engineering, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha 410073, China.
authors.forename: Xiaodong
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Yuan
authors.affiliation: College of Optoelectronic Science and Engineering, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha 410073, China.|State Key Laboratory of High Performance Computing, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, 410073, China.
authors.forename: Shiqiao
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Qin