Processing carbon nanotubes with holographic optical tweezers

Abstract

We report the first demonstration that carbon nanotubes can be trapped and manipulated by optical tweezers. This observation is surprising because individual nanotubes are substantially smaller than the wavelength of light, and thus should not be amenable to optical trapping. Even so, nanotube bundles, and perhaps even individual nanotubes, can be transported at high speeds, deposited onto substrates, untangled, and selectively ablated, all with visible light. The use of holographic optical tweezers, capable of creating hundreds of independent traps simultaneously, suggests opportunities for highly parallel nanotube processing with light.

3 pages, 1 figure

References in corpus (2)

• Laser Spinning of Nanotubes: A path to fast-rotating microdevices
• Sorting by Periodic Potential Energy Landscapes: Optical Fractionation

Cited by in corpus (5)

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• Optical guiding of absorbing nanoclusters in air
• Design strategies for optimizing holographic optical tweezers setups
• Manipulating spatial qudit states with programmable optical devices
• Tuning the size and configuration of nanocarbon microcapsules: aqueous method using optical tweezers