Fig. 1.

The 2D controllable particle hopping in an optofluidic lattice. a Generation of the 2D lattice in an optofluidic chip. b Forces acting on a particle in the hotspot. c Illustration of the realisation of controllable particle hopping loop around the ellipsoid hotspots. Illustration of the simulated normalised light intensity (top row) and potential energy (bottom row) profiles of particle hopping triggered by three different mechanisms: d particle bypassing, e snookering-like particle collision and f particle aggregation. The intensity profiles in y–z plane (vertical) are slightly shifted from the central line (x = 0) to have a better view of the particle trajectories