Maurizio Righini joined ICFO-The Institute of photonic sciences in Barcelona as a PhD student one year ago. He works in the Plasmon nano-optic group lead by Romain Quidant, where one of the major challenges of optical tweezers is investigated: the accurate trapping and manipulation with light of subwavelength objects. The radiation forces induced by intense plasmon fields bound to noble metal surfaces are exploited as a novel method for both scaling down the trapping volumes to the nanometer scale and extending the concept of micro- and nano-optical manipulation on- a-chip. Maurizio’s work, co-financed by the SONS (Self-Organised Nano-Structures)- NOMSAN project has been recently acknowledged by the publication of the paper “Parallel and selective trapping in a patterned plasmonic landscape” in Nature Physics (3, 477 - 480, 2007).
His poster 'Parrallel and selective trapping in a patterned plasmonic landscape' can be downloaded here (pdf).
