Slow light microfluidics: a proposal

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel microfluidic technique using slow light resonant structures on optical capillaries for simultaneous detection and manipulation of microparticles, combining sensing and optical trapping in a compact device.

Contribution

It introduces a new concept of slow light resonant structures on capillaries for microfluidic detection and manipulation, with a theoretical model demonstrating particle detection and optical trapping capabilities.

Findings

Microparticle positions can be determined from the resonator spectrum.

Microparticles can be driven and positioned using localized electromagnetic fields.

The approach enables simultaneous detection and manipulation in microfluidics.

Abstract

The resonant slow light structures created along a thin-walled optical capillary by nanoscale deformation of its surface can perform comprehensive simultaneous detection and manipulation of microfluidic components. This concept is illustrated with a model of a 0.5 millimeter long 5 nm high triangular bottle resonator created at a 50 micron radius silica capillary containing floating microparticles. The developed theory shows that the microparticle positions can be determined from the bottle resonator spectrum. In addition, the microparticles can be driven and simultaneously positioned at predetermined locations by the localized electromagnetic field created by the optimized superposition of eigenstates of this resonator, thus, exhibiting a multicomponent near field optical tweezers.