Optical trapping and manipulation of metallic micro/nanoparticles via photorefractive crystals

A simple method to trap and manipulate metallic micro/nanoparticles on the surface of photorefractive crystals is proposed. After inducing inhomogeneous charge density and space-charge fields in photorefractive crystals by non-uniform illumination, both uncharged and charged metallic particles can be trapped on the illuminated surface due to dielectrophoretic force and electrophoretic force, respectively. A transition from dielectrophoresis to electrophoresis is observed when manipulating nano-silver particles with high surface space-charge field. Our results show that this method is simple and effective to form surface microstructures of metallic particles. (C) 2009 Optical Society of America