Microscopic Metavehicles Powered and Steered by Embedded Optical Metasurfaces

TL;DR

This paper introduces microscopic optical metavehicles powered and steered by embedded metasurfaces, enabling long-distance movement and complex navigation using low-power light and polarization control.

Contribution

It demonstrates the use of optomechanical effects in dielectric metasurfaces to create controllable microscopic vehicles capable of complex motion and cargo transport.

Findings

Metavehicles can travel long distances under low-power illumination.

They can be steered through light polarization.

They can transport microscopic cargo, including organisms.

Abstract

Nanostructured dielectric metasurfaces offer unprecedented opportunities to manipulate light by imprinting an arbitrary phase-gradient on an impinging wavefront. This has resulted in the realization of a range of flat analogs to classical optical components like lenses, waveplates and axicons. However, the change in linear and angular optical momentum associated with phase manipulation also results in previously unexploited forces acting on the metasurface itself. Here, we show that these optomechanical effects can be utilized to construct optical metavehicles - microscopic particles that can travel long distances under low-power plane-wave illumination while being steered through the polarization of the incident light. We demonstrate movement in complex patterns, self-correcting motion, and an application as transport vehicles for microscopic cargo, including unicellular organisms. The abundance of possible optical metasurfaces attests to the prospect of developing a wide variety of metavehicles with specialized functional behavior.