Our paper Evanescent wave optical trapping and transport of micro- and nanoparticles on tapered optical fibers has been published online in the Journal of Quantitative Spectrocopy and Radiative Transfer doi: 10.1016/j.jqsrt.2012.06.005.
From the abstract: We investigate the manipulation of microscopic and nanoscopic particles
using the evanescent optical field surrounding an optical fiber that is
tapered to a micron-scale diameter, and propose that this scheme could
be used to discriminate between, and thereby sort, metallic
nanoparticles. First we show experimentally the concept of the transport
of micron-sized spheres along a tapered fiber and measure the particle
velocity. Having demonstrated the principle we then consider
theoretically the application to the optical trapping and guiding of
metallic nanoparticles, where the presence of a plasmon resonance is
used to enhance optical forces. We show that the dynamics of the
nanoparticles trapped by the evanescent field can be controlled by the
state of polarization of the fiber mode, and by using more than one
wavelength differently detuned from the nanoparticle plasmon resonance.
Such a scheme could potentially be used for selectively trapping and
transporting nano- or microscopic material from a polydisperse
suspension.
