Nanoparticle trapping and routing on plasmonic nanorails in a microfluidic channel

Abstract

Plasmonic nanostructures hold great promise for enabling advanced optical manipulation of nanoparticles in microfluidic channels, resulting from the generation of strong and controllable light focal points at the nanoscale. A primary remaining challenge in the current integration of plasmonics and microfluidics is to transport trapped nanoparticles along designated routes. Here we demonstrate through numerical simulation a plasmonic nanoparticle router that can trap and route a nanoparticle in a microfluidic channel with a continuous fluidic flow. The nanoparticle router contains a series of gold nanostrips on top of a continuous gold film. The nanostrips support both localised and propagating surface plasmons under light illumination, which underpin the trapping and routing functionalities. The nanoparticle guiding at a Y-branch junction is enabled by a small change of 50 nm in the wavelength of incident light.