Hybrid Metamaterial Optical Tweezers for Dielectric Particles and Biomolecules Discrimination

Although plasmonic nanotweezers can achieve manipulation on a scale smaller than the diffraction limit, direct trapping of sub-10 nm bioparticles in an aqueous environment without modifications remains challenging. Here, we demonstrate enzyme delivery-trapping and dynamic manipulation at the single-entity level by employing photothermal-assisted trapping via metamaterial optical tweezers at low trapping laser intensities. By analyzing the probability density function, we are able to distinguish dielectric particles from biomolecules. For enzyme-related data, the presence of two peaks in violin plots indicates conformational changes or interactions with the environment. We also observe that increasing the laser intensity increases the local temperature, resulting in enzyme aggregation. This study provides an alternative approach for identifying single enzymes and dielectric particles by combining plasmonic fields and photothermal heat, while paving the way for label-free characterization of biomolecules at the single-particle level.