Controlled Optofluidic Crystallization of Colloids Tethered at Interfaces

We report experiments that show rapid crystallization of colloids tethered to an oil-water interface in response to laser illumination. This light-induced transition is due to a combination of long-ranged thermophoretic pumping and local optical binding. We show that the flow-induced force on the co...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physical review letters 2020-08, Vol.125 (6), p.1-068001, Article 068001
Main Authors: Caciagli, Alessio, Singh, Rajesh, Joshi, Darshana, Adhikari, R, Eiser, Erika
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Colloids
Crystallization
Optical pumping
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Summary:We report experiments that show rapid crystallization of colloids tethered to an oil-water interface in response to laser illumination. This light-induced transition is due to a combination of long-ranged thermophoretic pumping and local optical binding. We show that the flow-induced force on the colloids can be described as the gradient of a potential. The nonequilibrium steady state due to local heating thus admits an effective equilibrium description. The optofluidic manipulation explored in this work opens novel ways to manipulate and assemble colloidal particles.
ISSN:0031-9007
1079-7114
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevLett.125.068001