Optical trapping and manipulating with a transmissive and polarization-insensitive metalens

Trapping and manipulating micro-objects and achieving high-precision measurements of tiny forces and displacements are of paramount importance in both physical and biological research. While conventional optical tweezers rely on tightly focused beams generated by bulky microscope systems, the emergence of flat lenses, particularly metalenses, has revolutionized miniature optical tweezers applications. In contrast to traditional objectives, the metalenses can be seamlessly integrated into sample chambers, facilitating flat-optics-based light manipulation. In this study, we propose an experimentally realized transmissive and polarization-insensitive water-immersion metalens, constructed using adaptive nano-antennas. This metalens boasts an ultra-high numerical aperture of 1.28 and achieves a remarkable focusing efficiency of approximately 50 % at a wavelength of 532 nm. Employing this metalens, we successfully demonstrate stable optical trapping, achieving lateral trapping stiffness exceeding 500 pN/(μm W). This stiffness magnitude aligns with that of conventional objectives and surpasses the performance of previously reported flat lenses. Furthermore, our bead steering experiment showcases a lateral manipulation range exceeding 2 μm, including a region of around 0.5 μm exhibiting minimal changes in stiffness for smoothly optical manipulation. We believe that this metalens paves the way for flat-optics-based optical tweezers, simplifying and enhancing optical trapping and manipulation processes, attributing ease of use, reliability, high performance, and compatibility with prevalent optical tweezers applications, including single-molecule and single-cell experiments.