Nanophotonics and Metasurfaces for Optical Manipulation
A special issue of Photonics (ISSN 2304-6732). This special issue belongs to the section "Optical Interaction Science".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 October 2026 | Viewed by 1223
Special Issue Editors
Interests: nanophotonics; nanotweezers; metasurface; light-matter interaction; optofluidics
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: chiral optical effects in photonic chips; optical manipulation; AI-assisted design and optimization of micro/nano-optical structures
Interests: nanotechnology; optical trapping; plasmonics; nanophotonics; metasurfaces; extracellular vesicles; electrokinetics; bio-imaging; finite element simulation
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The rapid evolution of nanophotonics has opened new horizons in optical manipulation, enabling capabilities far beyond those of conventional optical tweezers. Nanophotonic platforms, spanning high-Q dielectric metasurfaces, plasmonic nanoantennas, and hybrid photonic architectures have provided powerful strategies for engineering strongly confined electromagnetic fields and tailored momentum transfer at deeply subwavelength scales. These advances have significantly enhanced our ability to control nanoparticles, biomolecules, quantum emitters, and other nanoscale objects with unprecedented precision.
A particularly exciting direction is the integration of nanophotonics with optofluidics, which has catalyzed the emergence of novel nanotweezer paradigms based on field enhancement, thermally mediated forces, and gradient-engineered energy landscapes. Such optofluidic platforms enable low-power and stable trapping, high-throughput particle transport, and robust manipulation within microfluidic environments. They also unlock near-field optical sorting, allowing selective transport and enrichment based on particle size, composition, or optical properties. In addition, enhanced optical chirality in metasurfaces has opened pathways for chiral-selective manipulation, offering unique opportunities in biochemical analysis, enantioselective sensing, and fundamental studies of chiral light–matter interactions.
The convergence of metasurfaces, near-field optical forces, and optofluidic engineering is driving rapid progress across biosensing, soft-matter physics, nanomanufacturing, quantum technology, and lab-on-chip systems. Programmable photonic architectures and AI-assisted inverse design further expand the design space, providing unprecedented flexibility for crafting advanced optical manipulation platforms.
This Special Issue, titled "Nanophotonics and Metasurfaces for Optical Manipulation", invites contributions that advance the fundamental physics, device concepts, experimental techniques, and emerging applications of nanophotonic optical manipulation. We welcome original research articles, review papers, and short communications.
We look forward to receiving your contributions.
Dr. Sen Yang
Dr. Xingguang Liu
Dr. Chuchuan Hong
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Photonics is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- optical tweezers
- nanotweezers
- optical manipulation
- nanomanipulation
- microfluidics
- optical forces
- photo-induced heating
- electrokinetics
- photophoretic effects
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