Atomic Force Microscopes (AFM) with 10 nm tip is employed to estimate work of adhesion at nano-scale. The AFM tip is pressed against the surface with forces around a few nano-Newtons and retracted back until it breaks from the surface. Thus estimating the work of adhesion due to this technique can be termed as “hard probing” of the surface. Whereas, we propose another configuration in which a spherical particle is trapped near the surface using a linearly polarized light and the particle attaches to the surface by work of adhesion. Here, by moving the surface in tangential direction, the particle is forced into a rolling motion. This motion can be used to estimate work of adhesion and this technique can be called “soft probing”. We used the soft probing configuration to estimate rolling work of adhesion of a birefringent 3 μm particle on a glass surface. Further, we have studied the effects of PolydimethylSiloxane (PDMS) which is a hydrophobic surface. This technique is used to probe the rolling work of adhesion of 500 nm nanodiamond bearing Nitrogen-vacancy centers which are birefringent due to the stress in the crystal. These nanodiamonds have a contact diameter as small as 50 nm because of their relatively high Young’s modulus. The rolling work of adhesion estimated using our soft probing configuration is about 1 mJ/m2, while using the AFM tips to estimate work of adhesion at nanoscale yields about 50 mJ/m2.
Up-converting particles (UCP) absorb wavelengths in IR region and emit light in visible region by multiphoton absorption process. When optically trapped with 975 nm laser, these particles show active Hot Brownian Motion (HBM) due to the temperature difference created across the particle by the trapping laser. This is akin to an active particle optically confined in a tweezers with properly oriented motion. However, the activity vanishes when trapped with 1064 nm laser. We carefully maneuver the activity dependence of UCPs on laser wavelength to build a Stirling engine. A Stirling cycle consists of an isothermal expansion followed by isochoric cooling, isothermal compression and isochoric heating. Here, activity of the UCP in an optical trap is analogous to effective temperature which is controlled by the 975 nm laser. Whereas, the confinement of the trapped particle is similar to volume which can be altered by changing the trap stiffness of the 1064 nm laser trap. In this work, We first trap a UCP simultaneously with 1064 nm laser and 975 nm laser. Gradually decreasing 1064 nm laser power keeping 975 nm laser power constant decreases the trap stiffness resulting in less confinement of the UCP while keeping the activity constant. This process is considered as isothermal expansion. There can also be another process where 975 nm is increased and 1064 nm laser power is reduced leaving the total intensity constant. That would amount to isochoric process. We explore all these processes towards the Stirling cycle.
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