Optical trapping and manipulation of nanowires using multi-hotspot dielectric nanononamers

Abstract

Semiconductor nanowires have demonstrated great potential in all-photonic integrated circuit applications. However, the development of a controllable multidimensional nanowire assembly technique is still arguably in its infancy. Here, we numerically demonstrate the optical trapping and manipulation of cylindrical zinc oxide nanowires using an all-dielectric silicon nanononamer for designing programmable nanolasers. The nanononamer is composed of nine identical silicon nanocylinders arranged in a square grid on top of a glass substrate. This is a suitable choice, as optical trapping with the proposed silicon nanononamer is envisioned as an effective technique for the contactless manipulation of suspended nanowires with multiple hotspots and with negligible heating generation. We determine optical forces and torques applied to nanowires using the Maxwell stress tensor method. We investigate the influence of light polarization on the field confining and laser tweezing properties. For this work, the simple nanowire-based silicon photonic platform is compatible with the complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor technology, which allows low-cost fabrication of such structures and the integration with other on-chip optical components.