Graphene-based plasmonic tweezers

Conventional plasmonic tweezers with the ability to attract and immobilize nearby sub-diffraction limit sized particles can only enhance the trapping efficiency by changing the shape of the metal nano-structures. There are several problems with conventional plasmonic tweezers. First, trapped particles can easily escape from the trap by disturbances coming from the heat absorption of the metallic surfaces. These disturbances prevent prolonged observation of the trapped particles. Second, observation of the particles becomes a challenge because the opaqueness of the metal blocks the illumination pathways. These problems can be solved by using graphene, which has high transmittance and thermal conductivity. The carrier density of the graphene is tuned by externally controlling the Fermi level through the gate voltage. Tuning the carrier density alters the local field enhancement factor far beyond the capabilities provided by other metal-based plasmonic structures. In this paper, we have shown that particles can be trapped by graphene nanoholes with larger forces than gold nanoholes. The trapping forces on gold and graphene nanoholes were compared to illustrate the benefit of graphene nanoholes. Furthermore, various trapping modes of a particle under various geometries and configurations of graphene nanoholes is discussed. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.