Overcoming Diffusion-Limited Trapping in Nanoaperture Tweezers Using Opto-Thermal-Induced Flow.

ABSTRACT: Nanoaperture-based plasmonic tweezers have shown tremendous potential in trapping, sensing, and spectroscopic analysis of nano-objects with single-molecule sensitivity. However, the trapping process is often diffusion-limited and therefore suffers from low-throughput. Here, we present bubble- and convection-assisted trapping techniques, which use opto-thermally generated Marangoni and Rayleigh-Bénard convection flow to rapidly deliver particles from large distances to the nanoaperture instead of relying on normal diffusion, enabling a reduction of 1-2 orders of magnitude in particle-trapping time (i.e., time before a particle is trapped). At a concentration of 2 × 10⁷ particles/mL, average particle-trapping times in bubble- and convection-assisted trapping were 7 and 18 s, respe

SUBMITTER: Kotnala A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6952578 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature