High Index Contrast Tantalum Pentoxide Waveguides for Optical Propulsion

This proposal is for a research stay of a PhD student under YGGDRASIL mobility program announced by Research Council of Norway.The stay is for 7 months starting from 1 February 2010. The candidate, Mr. Ananth Subramanian is pursuing PhD (3rd Year) at the Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC), University of Southampton (UoS) on "Planar Lightwave Circuits Based on Tantalum Pentoxide (Ta2O5) Waveguides".There is a long-standing collaboration between Dr. Olav Gaute Hellesø at University of Tromsø (UiT) and Pr of. James S. Wilkinson at ORC.Mr. Subramanian has worked with the design, optimization and fabrication of high-index Ta2O5 waveguides for lasing applications. In collaboration with Dr. Balpreet Ahluwalia (Post-Doc, UiT) he has applied Ta2O5 waveguides for propelling micro-particles at higher speeds than previously reported.During his stay, the waveguides will be used for trapping and propulsion of nanoparticles.Here we propose to use the Ta2O5 waveguides with counter-propagating beams to hold nanoparticle s with nanometre precision. The present state-of-art for nanoparticles trapping on top of waveguide is limited to 1D propelling.We aim to form standing evanescent wave on top of waveguides to trap nanoparticles in 2D.Different designs of waveguides- rib, strip and slot waveguides will be fabricated in ORC and optical propulsion experiments will be carried at UiT.Propulsion of nanoparticles might be a step towards an "ink-jet printer" for nanoparticles. Dr. Hellesø is cooperating with the Department of Mol ecular Biotechnology in Tromsø.This allows easy access to liver cells.The aim of the cooperation is to develop new ways to look at the liver.This will be an important step in that direction by combining the Ta2O5 waveguides from ORC with the optical propu lsion experience in Dr. Hellesø's group.The propulsion of cells in addition to the nanoparticles will be combined with Raman-spectroscopy, which might give new information about the structures of the liver cells.