All-optical manipulation of photonic membranes

Abstract

Photonic membranes (PMs) are thin, highly-flexible, membranes which can be imbued with specific photonic functionalities when used to play host to plasmonic features.1-3 PMs can then take that photonic functionality and transfer it to an external object, provided that they can be manipulated with enough precision. We demonstrate a fabrication and optical manipulation protocol that allows PMs to be manoeuvred through a microfluidic environment, and show that the trap stiffness of such a scheme is on par with current techniques. The PMs shown here are 90 nm thick, with the potential to be extremely flexible. We comment on their current deformability.