Nanopatterning with Photonic Nanojets: Review and Perspectives in Biomedical Research

Abstract

Nanostructured surfaces and devices offer astounding possibilities for biomedical research, including cellular and molecular biology, diagnostics, and therapeutics. However, the wide implementation of these systems is currently limited by the lack of cost-effective and easy-to-use nanopatterning tools. A promising solution is to use optical methods based on photonic nanojets, namely, needle-like beams featuring a nanometric width. In this review, we survey the physics, engineering strategies, and recent implementations of photonic nanojets for high-throughput generation of arbitrary nanopatterns, along with applications in optics, electronics, mechanics, and biosensing. An outlook of the potential impact of nanopatterning technologies based on photonic nanojets in several relevant biomedical areas is also provided.

Scattering of the Radial Polarized Beams on the Metal Spherical Particle: Plasmonic Nanojet Formation

“…Formation of photonic nanojets for spherical dielectric particles illuminated by a plane wave is a well known problem [3,4]. The plane wave can be surrogated by a Gaussian beam with n 0, m 0, and a sufficiently small focusing parameter f (see Eq.…”

“…The transverse size (width) of this zone is less than the wavelength of incident light, whereas its size along the z-axis (length) is relatively large. Such a jet-like light structure is called photonic nanojet [3,4]. The shape and dimensions of the nanojet are varying with an increase of the focusing parameter f.…”

“…If its size is of the same order as the wavelength, field structures compressed in one or several directions can appear in the shadow area. The structures with the transverse dimensions less than the wavelength and the elongation greater than the wavelength are called photonic nanojets (PNJ) [3,4]. Photonic nanojets attract a continuously growing interest as a potential tool for operation with concentrated light forms under the diffraction limitation.…”

“…Photonic nanojets attract a continuously growing interest as a potential tool for operation with concentrated light forms under the diffraction limitation. Most of the studies in this area are directed to the formation of PNJ by light diffraction on dielectric microspheres [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14] and on microcylinders [15][16][17]. There are also studies devoted to other forms of scatterers, for example, microaxicons [18] or microdisks [19].…”

Multispectral Photonic Jet Shaping and Steering by Control of Tangential Electric Field Component on Cuboid Particle

“…However, there are very limited and clearly insufficient investigations of the role of tangential electric field components in the spatial and electromagnetic properties of the PJ. It could be noted that, in recent years, the studies in the field of the PJ effect based on the wavelength-scaled dielectric particles have gained more and more popularity and have found numerous applications, including optical trapping [23], nano-fabrications, and surface nano-patterning [24], quantum dot writing [25], microsphere-assisted microscopy and interferometry [26,27], auxiliary optomechanical manipulation [28], surface-enhanced Raman scattering [29], optical waveguides and switching [30,31], and biosensing [32], to name a few.…”