Promoting optofluidic actuation of microparticles with plasmonic nanoparticles

The amplitude of optical forces on flowing dielectric microparticles can be actuated by coating them partially with metallic nanospheres and exposing them to laser light within the surface plasmon resonance. Here, optical forces on both pure silica particles and silica-gold raspberries are characterized within an optical chromatography setup by measuring the Stokes drag versus laser beam power. Results are compared to Mie theory predictions for both core dielectric particles and core-shell ones where the shell is described by a continuous dielectricmetal composite of dielectric constant determined from the Maxwell Garnett approach. The nice observed quantitative agreement demonstrates that radiation pressure forces are directly related to the metal concentration present at the microparticle surface and that nano-metallic objects increase the magnitude of optical forces compared to pure dielectric particles of the same overall size, even at very low metal concentration. Behaving as “micro-sized nanoparticles", the benefit of microparticles coated with metallic nanospheres is thus twofold: (i) to enhance optofluidic manipulation and transport at the microscale and (ii) to increase sensing capabilities at the nanoscale, compared to separated pure dielectric particles and single metallic nanosystems.