Fabrication of nanoparticles for generation of force and torque at nanoscale

Chiral patterns are created by focused ion-beam milling nano-grooves with sub-15 nm resolution on thin metal films and arrays of nanoparticles, scattering and absorbing light selectively for left and right circularly polarized light, with high fidelity over fields up to 100 x 100 mu m(2) without positioning errors. This allows to carry out numerical simulations to estimate light enhancement and circular dichroism both on ideal and realistic particles taken from SEM images, showing doubling of scattering cross-section and enhancement changes up to 5 times controlled by dichroism, with localized field enhancements up to 20000. 3D plasmonic structures extending out of a gold film plane are created by dry etching of the film in the openings of a resist mask defined by electron beam lithography. Conical vertical protrusions (nano-wells) are left, and their optical properties are numerically simulated, showing easily reachable out-of-plane trapping of both dielectric and metal plasmonic nano-spheres, with trapping forces up to 20 pN/W/mu m(2). Wideband refractive index spectra in 3D-FDTD are correctly represented by overcoming the polynomial approximations to give accurate field and force/torque results for generalized artificial materials.