All-optical manipulation of photonic membranes

Photonic membranes (PMs) are thin, highly-flexible, membranes which can be imbued with specific photonic functionalities when used to play host to plasmonic features.1–3 PMs can then take that photonic functionality and transfer it to an external object, provided that they can be manipulated with enough precision. We demonstrate a fabrication and optical manipulation protocol that allows PMs to be manoeuvred through a microfluidic environment, and show that the trap stiffness of such a scheme is on par with current techniques. The PMs shown here are 90 nm thick, with the potential to be extremely flexible. We comment on their current deformability.