Electronic tweezers for magnesium oxide nanoparticles

In this work, we present recent findings regarding the linear momentum transferred from swift electrons, like those typically used in Scanning and Transmission Electron Microscopy, to a magnesium oxide nanoparticle. We performed full-retarded numerical calculations based on Classical Electrodynamics formalism considering the interaction of a single fast electron, which is a good approximation due to the small electric current (tens of pA) involved in modern electron microscopes, with a spherical magnesium oxide nanoparticle. As previously calculated for plasmonic nanoparticles, our results also show that the linear momentum transfer can be either attractive or repulsive for a magnesium oxide nanoparticle, depending on the relevant parameters of the problem: the distance between the electron and the nanoparticle and the electron’s speed. Interestingly, we found that the magnitude of the linear momentum transferred to the nanoparticle lies in the same range as for gold and aluminum nanoparticles. These theoretical results pave the way to consider the possibility of implementing electronic tweezers to manipulate not only metallic nanoparticles.