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Welcome to the website of the Nanoparticle Trapping Laboratory. We are interested in exploring the stochastic thermodynamics of microscopic machines and in developing new tools to study aerosol physics or colloidal science. We try to combine different trapping mechanisms with plasmonics and light scattering in order to get enhanced manipulation and sensing capabilities.
News
News
A few new publications!
1 paper on the heating/cooling asymmetry:
Heating and cooling are fundamentally asymmetric and evolve along distinct pathways Nature Physics (2024)
3 papers on the dynamics of absorbing particles:
Light-to-Heat Conversion of Optically Trapped Hot Brownian Particles ACS Nano 2023
Check a recent publication in Quanta Magazine highlighting the Mpemba effect.
Bienal Física 2022 en Murcia. Raúl will give 2 talks in 2 different Symposiums presenting recent progress in the lab.
FisEs22 conference in Zaragoza. An excellent meeting where Miguel Ibáñez presented a poster and Raúl gave a talk.
A Chemical Nanoreactor Based on a Levitated Nanoparticle in Vacuum
Check out our latest publication in ACS Nano in collaboration with Quidant Lab at ETHZ!
In this work, we demonstrate that a nanoparticle levitated in vacuum can be used to probe surface chemistry with unprecedented capabilities.
Raúl was invited to participate in a panel discussion on optomechanical machines organized by the British Optomechanical Research Network (UNIKORN seminars). You can watch the recording here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S12vmigluU8
New paper in PRL, in with collaboration the group of Prof. Lukas Novotny at ETH Zürich:
Check out our two new papers!
A. Valenzuela, R.A. Rica, F. J. Olmo-Reyes, and L. Alados-Arboledas Testing a Paul trap through determining the evaporation rate of levitated single semi-volatile organic droplets Optics Express 28 (2020) 34812-34824
G.P. Conangla, R.A. Rica, R. Quidant Extending vacuum trapping to absorbing objects with hybrid Paul-optical traps Nano Letters 20 (2020) 6018–6023
30-6-2020 Congratulations to Gerard Planes for successfully defending his PhD Thesis
New submission! Extending vacuum trapping to absorbing objects with hybrid Paul-optical traps arXiv:2005.05486
New publication in Physical Review A: Overdamped dynamics of a Brownian particle levitated in a Paul trap
Levitated microdroplets
New lab is ready (December 2019)! After substantial works, the new lab is ready to start building the new Nanoparticle Trapping Lab. See below the evolution of the works.
The lab back in spring 2019
Ongoing works during the summer.
Works finished!
During July 2019, Sergio Aranda and Raúl Fernández have been working as visiting students in the lab. They have optimized the generation of aerosol particles and droplets, and their storage in the Paul trap. They worked hard to see their droplets levitate.
Our paper "Motion control and optical interrogation of a levitating single NV in vacuum" has been accepted for publication in Nano Letters!!
18 March: I gave a seminar at UC3M, invited by Antonio Lasanta
Left to right: R. Quidant, F. Ricci, and R. Rica, just after the defense.
February 22th: F. Ricci successfully defended his PhD Thesis entitled: Levitodynamics toward Force Nano-Sensors in Vacuum at ICFO.
14th February: I joined the meeting of the European electro-hydrodynamic group at Málaga hosted by professor Ignacio G. Loscertales.
12-13 February: I visited the JPK labs in Berlin.
First trapping event at the NanoTLab!! Together with Antonio Valenzuela, we built a Paul trap to work at ambient pressure with nanoparticles and droplets. The image shows our first trapping event, where we captured a 1 um polystyrene bead (red bright spot in the picture).
The Nobel prize in Physics 2018 has been awarded to Arthur Ashkin (1/2) "for the optical tweezers and their application to biological systems" and Gérard Mourou (1/4) + Donna Strickland (1/4) "for their method of generating high intensity, ultra-short optical pulses". I'm particularly happy for the recognition to A. Ashkin. Prof. D. Petrov would be very happy for this recognition, he frequently vindicated the merits of prof. Ashkin.
After a long effort, we succeeded to publish our study towards boosting the performance of microfluidic chips for sensing applications by means of an electro-thermal effect. Check out the paper in ACS Photonics: "Overcoming Diffusion-Limited Biosensing by Electrothermoplasmonics"
New paper accepted in The European Journal of Physics Special Topics! In this paper we report on our work towards the connection of two ion clouds trapped in double-Paul trap system. preprint
Congratulations to Édgar Roldán for his new position and group at ICTP (Trieste)!!. All the best for this new venture!
Since March 2017 we have been working on the assembly of a novel double Paul trap system. After a hard effort, we detected a cloud of calcium ions for the first time in this system.
Pau Mestres successfully defended his PhD thesis. Congratulations Dr. Mestres!!! News from ICFO
New submission! Check out my first paper with real ions here
Next week I'll be at ICFO for the Maser School + Symposium on Optical trapping in honor of Dima Petrov
New paper out in Nature Communications! Optically levitated nanoparticle as a model system for stochastic bistable dynamics Link to Journal (Open Access)
Our Review on colloidal heat engines was accepted and published in Soft Matter
Esta investigación ha sido financiada por la Consejería de Universidad, Investigación e Innovación de la Junta de Andalucía y por FEDER, Una manera de hacer Europa (P18-FR-3583)
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