Experimental Study of Transverse Trapping Forces of an Optothermal Trap Close to an Absorbing Reflective Film

The optothermal manipulation of micro-objects is significant for understanding and exploring the unknown in the microscale word, which has found many applications in colloidal science and life science. In this work, we study the transverse forces of an optothermal trap in front of a gold film, which is an absorbing reflective surface for the incident laser beam. It is demonstrated that optothermal forces can be divided into two parts: optical force of a standing-wave trap, and thermal force of a thermal trap. The optical force of the standing-wave trap can be obtained by measuring the optical trapping force close to a non-absorbing film with same reflectance. The thermal force can be obtained by subtracting the optical force of the standing-wave trap from the total trapping force of the optothermal trap close to the gold film. The results show that both optical and thermal trapping forces increase with laser power increasing. The optical trapping force is larger than the thermal trapping force, which is composed of convective drag force and thermophoretic force. Further experiment is run to study the composition of thermal force. The result shows that the convective flow is generated later than the thermophoretic flow. The results proposed here are useful for enabling users to optimize optothermal manipulation method for future applications.

Automated summary

This study examines the transverse forces of an optothermal trap in front of a gold film and divides the optothermal forces into optical force and thermal force. The results show that both optical and thermal trapping forces increase as laser power increases, with the optical trapping force being greater. Further experiments reveal that convective flow occurs later than thermophoretic flow.