Optofluidic light routing via analytically configuring streamlines of microflow

• Published in: Microfluidics and nanofluidics Vol. 23; no. 8; pp. 1 - 9
• Main Authors: Yan, Ruopeng, Yang, Yunran, Tu, Xin, Huang, Tianye, Liu, Yangjié, Song, Chaolong
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01-08-2019; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Analytical Chemistry; Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering; Dipoles; Electromagnetic fields; Engineering; Engineering Fluid Dynamics; Flow rates; Flow velocity; Light; Mathematical analysis; Metamaterials; Nanotechnology and Microengineering; Optics; Research Paper; Streamlines; Two dimensional flow; Two dimensional models; Transformation optics; Optofluidics; Fluidic source–sink pair; Optical source–sink pair
• ISSN: 1613-4982; 1613-4990
• DOI: 10.1007/s10404-019-2267-1

Transformation optics (TO) has emerged as an effective method to design metamaterials that can manipulate electromagnetic fields. Different from the traditional TO techniques which are mostly based on the solid metamaterials with a limited range of tunability, a novel streamline tracing-based transformation optofluidic (STTOF) method is proposed to manipulate the light path by analytically designating the light-carrying streamlines of the flow in a two-dimensional circular bounded domain. A dipole flow model is built to analytically calculate the streamlines of the flow field inside the domain permitting optical/fluidic source and sink pairs at arbitrary positions. Liquid core/liquid cladding (
L
2
) configuration is used in the experiment to carry the light via following a specific streamline. Experimental results verify that the light paths agree well with the theoretical predictions, and show that a good range of tunability can be achieved by adjusting either the flow rates or the positions of optical/fluidic source and sink pairs.