Fig. 17: Regulating the motion of potential wells for optical sorting.

a Optical conveyor belt consists of three substructures for sorting 200 nm and 400 nm magnetic particles. Reproduced with permission376. Copyright 2014, American Chemical Society. b Plasmonic metasurface enabled optical conveyor for sorting particles with sizes of 2 µm, 3 µm, and 4 µm by adjusting different polarizations of light. Reproduced with permission380. Copyright 2021, Optical Society of America. c Optical wagon-wheel effect to achieve the separation of 102 nm and 155 nm polystyrene nanoparticles. Reproduced with permission381. Copyright 2021, Wiley-VCH GmbH