Manipulation of Fluid Convection by Surface Lattice Resonance

Abstract The capability of plasmonic metasurfaces (PMs) under illumination to generate heat and induce fluid convection is a promising building approach for optofluidic applications. However, the low quality (Q)‐factor in PMs introduced into optofluidic applications remains a challenging problem. In this paper, a PM optofluidic platform based on surface lattice resonance (SLR) with a high Q‐factor is proposed. Numerical results demonstrate that SLR‐based metasurfaces can manipulate the convective flow of fluid at the nanoscale, with the Q‐factor approaching 138. Moreover, compared to the localized surface plasmon resonance‐based metasurface, the SLR‐based metasurfaces exhibit improved absorption, temperature rise, and flow velocity performance. In particular, the absorption coefficient at the SLR peak in an adequately designed PM can be close to unity. This study reveals that SLR is an efficient and alternative method to manipulate the fluid flow, and paves the way to flexible wavelength‐scale devices for optofluidic applications.