Towards an optofluidic pump?

Abstract

Most of the vibrating mechanisms of optofluidicsystems are based on local heating of membranes that in-duces liquid flow. We report here a new type of diaphragmpump in a liquid film based on the optical radiation pres-sure force. We modulate a low power laser that gener-ates, at resonance, a symmetric vibration of a free standingsoap film. The film lifetime strongly varies from 56 s at lowpower (2 mW) to 2 s at higher power (70 mW). Since thelaser beam only acts mechanically on the interfaces, sucha pump could be easily implemented on delicate micro-equipment on chips or in biological systems.