Abstract
The ability to manipulate in-fibre particles is of technological and scientific significance, yet particle manipulation inside solid environment remains fundamentally challenging. Here we show an accurately controlled, non-contact, size- and material-independent method for manipulating in-fibre particles based on laser-induced thermocapillary convection. The laser liquefaction process transforms the fibre from a solid media into an ideal fluid environment and triggers the in-fibre thermocapillary convection. In-fibre particles, with diameter from submicron to hundreds of microns, can be migrated toward the designated position. The number of particles being migrated, the particle migration velocity and direction can be precisely controlled. As a proof-of-concept, the laser-induced flow currents lead to the migration-to-contact of dislocated in-fibre p- and n-type semiconductor particles and the forming of dual-particle p-n homo- and heterojunction directly in a fibre. This approach not only enables in-fibre device assembly to achieve multi-component fibre devices, but also provide fundamental insight for in-solid particle manipulation.
Highlights
The ability to manipulate in-fibre particles is of technological and scientific significance, yet particle manipulation inside solid environment remains fundamentally challenging
Because of the thermal liquefaction process induced by the CO2 laser heating, the solid fibre cladding can be transferred into an ideal fluidic media, enabling the thermocapillary convection manipulation to move in-fibre particles to any designed positions
Functional material-core glass-cladding fibre is firstly drawn from a macroscopic preform (See Methods and Supplementary Note 2 for details), and the fabricated fibre is fed into a CO2 laser to form in-fibre particles
Summary
The ability to manipulate in-fibre particles is of technological and scientific significance, yet particle manipulation inside solid environment remains fundamentally challenging. The thermocapillary effect studied in this paper is a common physical phenomenon, it is observed in daily life which occurs when there is a gradient of surface tension in liquid[37,38] It has long been used in microfluidics applications as a non-contact, stable, size- and material-independent transport mechanism for trapping, filtering, pumping and migrating varisized particles[39,40,41]. To develop this phenomenon in-fibre for particles manipulation, we use the CO2 laser to heat the solid cladding, which introduces a gradient of surface tension within the fluidised fibre, particles migrate away from their original positions by the gradient forces, determined by the laser spot. This approach is validated by successfully forming in-fibre dual-particle semiconductor homoand heterojunction
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