Single-Beam Optical Conveyor Belt for Chiral Particles

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel method using unstructured chiral light to manipulate and transport chiral nanoparticles without traps, enabling selective sorting and delivery of enantiomers based on their chiral response.

Contribution

It presents a theoretical framework for an optical conveyor belt that operates without traps, tailored for chiral particles, expanding possibilities for nanoparticle manipulation.

Findings

Chiral metamaterials can be manipulated using unstructured light for controlled movement.

The method allows particles to be pushed or pulled independently of their position.

Potential applications include enantiomer separation and targeted nanoparticle delivery.

Abstract

A different paradigm is proposed to selectively manipulate and transport small engineered chiral particles and discriminate different enantiomers using unstructured chiral light. It is theoretically shown that the response of a chiral metamaterial particle may be tailored to enable an optical conveyor belt operation with no optical traps, such that for a fixed incident light helicity the nanoparticle is either steadily pushed towards the direction of the photon flow or steadily pulled against the photon flow, independent of its position. Our findings create distinct opportunities for unconventional optical manipulations of tailored nanoparticles and may have applications in sorting racemic mixtures of artificial chiral molecules and in particle delivery.