Optical sorting in evanescent standing wave

We combined the principle of evanescent optical conveyor belt with the tilted potential and together with the size effect we obtained a system that can efficiently sort submicrometer size object according to their size. No image recognision or decision making unit is needed.

MOVIE sorting polystyrene beads of 350 and 750 nm

We tested also other sizes but always one must be insensitive to the standing wave and the other has to be transportable by the evanescent optical conveyor belt. Examples of insensitive sizes are white in the following figure (d-polystyrene bead diameter, ΔU – depht of the trap, θ₁ – incident angle on the prism surface).

Further examples of optical sorting of submicrometer objects.

More can be found in the following paper:

T. Cizmar, M. Siler, M. Sery, P. Zemanek, V. Garces-Chavez, K. Dholakia: "Optical sorting and detection of submicrometer objects in a motional standing wave",
       Phys. Rev. B 74, 035105:1-6, 2006,   ABSTRACT   DOWNLOAD

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Last modification: 16 Jan 2009