Optical Trapping and Orientation Manipulation of 2D Inorganic Materials using a Linearly Polarized Laser Beam
M. Tominaga, Y. Higashi, T. Kumamoto, T. Nagashita, T. Nakato, Y. Suzuki, J. Kawamata
Clays and Clay Minerals, 2018, ASAP.
DOI: 10.1346/CCMN.2017.064075

Abstruct: Owing to the large anisotropy of inorganic nanosheets, such as clay minerals, the orientation manipulation of nanosheets is an important challenge for realizing future functional materials. In this study, the methodology for a novel nanosheet manipulation by using laser radiation pressure is proposed. When a linearly polarized laser beam was used to irradiate a niobate nanosheet colloid, the nanosheet was trapped at the focal point so that its in-plane direction was oriented parallel to the propagation direction of the incident laser beam so as to minimize the scattering force. In addition, the trapped nanosheet was aligned along the polarization direction of the linearly polarized laser beam. Thus, a unidirectional alignment of nanosheet can be realized simply by irradiation with a laser beam.