Miniaturized Metalens Based Optical Tweezers on Liquid Crystal Droplets for Lab-on-a-Chip Optical Motors

Surfaces covered with layers of ultrathin nanoantenna structures—so called metasurfaces have recently been proven capable of completely controlling phase of light. Metalenses have emerged from the advance in the development of metasurfaces providing a new basis for recasting traditional lenses into...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Crystals (Basel) 2019-10, Vol.9 (10), p.515
Main Authors: Suwannasopon, Satayu, Meyer, Fabian, Schlickriede, Christian, Chaisakul, Papichaya, T-Thienprasert, Jiraroj, Limtrakul, Jumras, Zentgraf, Thomas, Chattham, Nattaporn
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Angular momentum
Circular polarization
Design
Droplets
Electron beam lithography
Fourier transforms
Glass substrates
Lab-on-a-chip
Laser beams
Lasers
Light
liquid crystal droplets
Liquid crystals
Luminous intensity
metalens
metamaterials
Nanorods
Nematic crystals
Optical components
Optical properties
Optical rotation
optical trap
optical tweezers
pancharatnam-berry phase
Polarized light
Rotating liquids
Software
Spectrum analysis
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Summary:Surfaces covered with layers of ultrathin nanoantenna structures—so called metasurfaces have recently been proven capable of completely controlling phase of light. Metalenses have emerged from the advance in the development of metasurfaces providing a new basis for recasting traditional lenses into thin, planar optical components capable of focusing light. The lens made of arrays of plasmonic gold nanorods were fabricated on a glass substrate by using electron beam lithography. A 1064 nm laser was used to create a high intensity circularly polarized light focal spot through metalens of focal length 800 µm, N.A. = 0.6 fabricated based on Pancharatnam-Berry phase principle. We demonstrated that optical rotation of birefringent nematic liquid crystal droplets trapped in the laser beam was possible through this metalens. The rotation of birefringent droplets convinced that the optical trap possesses strong enough angular momentum of light from radiation of each nanostructure acting like a local half waveplate and introducing an orientation-dependent phase to light. Here, we show the success in creating a miniaturized and robust metalens based optical tweezers system capable of rotating liquid crystals droplets to imitate an optical motor for future lab-on-a-chip applications.
ISSN:2073-4352
2073-4352
DOI:10.3390/cryst9100515