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Updated: May 14, 2026

Optical Trapping of Plasmonic Nanoparticles for In Situ Surface-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy Characterizations
Published on: June 23, 2022
Surface-enhanced Raman scattering with Ag nanoparticles optically trapped by a photonic crystal cavity
Shiyun Lin1, Wenqi Zhu, Yuhang Jin
1School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, 33 Oxford Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA.
Abstract:
We demonstrate a reusable and reconfigurable surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) platform by optically trapping Ag nanoparticles with a photonic crystal cavity integrated with a microfluidic chip. High-performance SERS is performed in a very reproducible manner, owing to the fact that Ag aggregates are produced by optical trapping in a controllable process that is monitored in real-time by the cavity resonance shift that occurs with the trapping of each additional nanoparticle.

