Integrated plasmonic nanotweezers: Toward the manipulation of nanoobjects

In this paper, we present the numerical conception of a surface plasmon-based nanotweezers obtained by coupling a short nanoparticle chain to a traditional SOI waveguide. In particular, we detail on simplified calculation scheme, based on the estimation of the gradient force, able to ease the analysis when the refractive index of the tweezed particles is similar to that of the background. Results suggest the possibility of controlling the position where the trapping occurs along the chain as a function of the wavelength. This may be crucial for achieving the possibility of manipulating objects in the nanoscale by means of integrated devices.