'All optical manipulation of optomechanical surfaces'

The aim of the project is to establish a new biophotonic platform based on the all-optical manipulation of photonic metasurfaces (PMs) in microfluidic environments. The project exploits the uniquely versatile photonic response of PMs and their high intrinsic mechanical stability to scale down of several orders of magnitude the footprint of microscopy tools and to address key fundamental biological questions at the interface with molecular and cell biology.

The project will be a collaboration between several PhD student and researchers. My portion of the project will involve working on the holographic optical tweezers setup used to manipulate the PM and the PM motion detection. This will first be done using a quadrant photodiode to calibrate the system, then constructing a homodyne scheme Doppler vibrometer to track the membrane oscillations and finally to design PM on top of the membranes which will allow exact displacement tracing by controlled scattering of light. Once the Doppler vibrometer is operational, I will also work on force sensing by attaching two PM to a piece of DNA and unwinding it from the centre.