Materials Engineering: Tailoring New Materials through Light-Induced Nanoparticle Assembly

Forces and Binding of Nanoparticles Mediated by Graphene Surface Plasmons: Towards Tunable Optical Matter

We present results for force resulting from the near field scattering between dielectric nanoparticles and a graphene planar structure. Surface plasmons (SPs) generated on graphene act as an intermediary for enhancing the optical quasi-periodic long-range force between nanoparticles to organize at different extended structures with characteristic length scales comparable with the plasmon wavelength below the diffraction limit for structures with a number of particles large enough. Using a rigorous formalism based on the electromagnetic Green theory, we calculate the binding energy potential whose depth quantifies the stability of such configurations and we have obtained simple analytical expressions that explain the main results obtained. This contribution can be valuable for the knowledge in the low-frequency optical binding framework, from terahertz to far-infrared spectrum for the possibility of the formation of a regular arrangement of nanoparticles with parameters below the diffraction limit.