Optical manipulation and tweezers articles from across Nature Portfolio

Submicron light-driven nanorobots powered by a plasmonic directional nanoantenna are controlled by laser polarization. They move rapidly along complex paths and capture, assemble, transport, and release bacteria, functioning as robotic cleaners.

Interferometric Electrohydrodynamic Tweezers (IET) uniquely integrates parallel trapping with label-free interferometric imaging and non-destructive Raman spectroscopy for simultaneous sizing and chemical characterization of nanoscale extracellular vesicles and nanoparticles.

Detecting trace amounts of harmful bacteria and nanoscale biomarkers is crucial for early diagnosis and disease prevention, yet conventional methods are often slow and lack sensitivity. The authors introduce a rapid, highly sensitive detection method using a metallic thin-film-coated optical fibre module, significantly enhancing target assembly efficiency and offering promising applications in bioanalytical detection, drug delivery and material assembly technologies.

A structureless holographic approach is proposed to generate and control complex plasmonic fields on flat metal films. This method facilitates dynamic manipulation of energy flow and enables the guided transport of particles like a surface slide.

The propagation of structured light in free space is bound to the existing solutions of Helmholtz equation. Here, authors propose a hydrodynamic formulation of optics to design and generate well-known beam families and introduce additional specialized modes. The formalism is experimentally validated through optical tweezers and free-space communications.

We developed flexible, stretchable, on-chip optical tweezers (FSOT) capable of high-throughput trapping and manipulation of bioparticles with sizes ranging from sub-100 nm to tens of micrometers on curved bio-substrates such as skin and intestines.

High-purity quantum states, essential for quantum technological applications, were achieved by cooling optically levitated silica nanoparticles.

A photonic force microscope has been developed with a trapped lanthanide-doped crystal detecting forces as small as 110 aN. This opens new prospects for force sensing in the physical sciences.