From intuition to optimization: a review of inverse design applied to optical nanotweezers.

Abstract

Optical nanotweezers, which integrate nanophotonic structures such as plasmonic antennas, dielectric resonators, and metasurfaces, have emerged as powerful tools for manipulating nanoparticles, biomolecules, and viruses with high precision. However, traditional designs rely heavily on heuristic approaches and simple geometries, limiting performance. Inverse design offers a paradigm shift by using computational optimization methods to discover non-intuitive, high-performance structures for optical trapping. This Review provides an overview of key inverse design methodologies, including adjoint-based optimization, topology optimization, and machine learning approaches, and highlights their bro..