Optical trapping, pulling, and Raman spectroscopy of airborne absorbing particles based on negative photophoretic force

Optical pulling is the attraction of objects back to the light source by the use of optically induced “negative forces”. The light-induced photophoretic force is generated by the momentum transfer between the heating particles and surrounding gas molecules and can be several orders of magnitude larger than the radiation force and gravitation force. Here, we demonstrate that micron-sized absorbing particles can be optically pulled and manipulated towards the light source over a long distance in air with a collimated Gaussian laser beam based on a negative photophoretic force. A variety of airborne absorbing particles can be pulled by this optical pipeline to the region where they are optically trapped with another focused laser beam and their chemical compositions are characterized with Raman spectroscopy. We found that micron-sized particles are pulled over a meter-scale distance in air with a pulling speed of 1-10 cm/s in the optical pulling pipeline and its speed can be controlled by changing the laser intensity. When an aerosol particle is optically trapped with a focused Gaussian beam, we measured its rotation motion around the laser propagation direction and measured its Raman spectroscopy for chemical identification by molecular fingerprints. The centripetal acceleration of the trapped particle as high as ~20 times the gravitational acceleration was observed. Optical pulling over large distances with lasers in combination with Raman spectroscopy opens up potential applications for the collection and identification of atmospheric particles.