{"id":237307,"date":"2026-05-17T06:13:19","date_gmt":"2026-05-17T11:13:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/optical-meta-conveyors-enable-programmable-nanomanipulation-along-arbitrary-open-paths"},"modified":"2026-05-17T06:13:19","modified_gmt":"2026-05-17T11:13:19","slug":"optical-meta-conveyors-enable-programmable-nanomanipulation-along-arbitrary-open-paths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/optical-meta-conveyors-enable-programmable-nanomanipulation-along-arbitrary-open-paths","title":{"rendered":"Optical meta\u2011conveyors enable programmable nanomanipulation along arbitrary open paths"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/optical-meta-conveyors-enable-programmable-nanomanipulation-along-arbitrary-open-paths2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The task of gently transporting a microscopic particle from one point to another along a winding path, and then bringing it back using nothing more than a single, compact chip is a challenge we set out to address in our new study, now <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41467-026-73024-0\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in Nature Communications.<\/p>\n<p>Optical forces arising from momentum exchange during light\u2013matter interactions have become indispensable tools in biophysics, soft matter science and micro-and nanofabrication. Among these, optical conveyors\u2014capable of generating stable, directional optical flows\u2014enable nanoparticle transport along predefined trajectories, offering unique advantages for drug delivery, cell sorting, and lab-on-a-chip systems. However, conventional platforms often rely on spatial light modulators to produce dynamic holograms. Such systems are bulky, constrained by limited pixel size and count, and difficult to integrate\u2014factors that severely impede practical deployment.<\/p>\n<p>Metasurfaces have recently opened new pathways for miniaturizing optical manipulation devices, thanks to their subwavelength field-shaping capabilities. Yet, most existing metasurface-based schemes still depend on radially or azimuthally uniform phase gradients, which confine the resulting optical flow to closed loops (vortex rings) due to the intrinsic geometry of vortex fields.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The task of gently transporting a microscopic particle from one point to another along a winding path, and then bringing it back using nothing more than a single, compact chip is a challenge we set out to address in our new study, now published in Nature Communications. Optical forces arising from momentum exchange during light\u2013matter [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1523,1923,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-237307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-computing","category-holograms","category-nanotechnology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237307\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}