ReviewLight, science & applications2025
Optical sorting: past, present and future.
Review in Light, science & applications, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
19 citing papers in PubMed.
- A Consecutive Separation Strategy Using a 3D-Printed Microfluidic Chip to Achieve High-Purity White Blood Cells From Blood.Electrophoresis · 2026Article
- Plasmonic Optical Tweezers and Surface-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy: Fundamentals, Single-Entity Applications, and the Evolving Role of Artificial Intelligence.Bioengineering (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Impacts of particle morphology and rotation on optical manipulation.Light, science & applications · 2026Article
- Ice-phase optothermal tweezers.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Imaginary Poynting momentum: polarization topology and versatile optical manipulation.National science review · 2026Article
- Particle-Based Detection of Surface Chemistry via Optical Microscopy-Integrating Microfluidics, Light-Induced Activity of Colloids and Data Science.Small methods · 2026Article
- Bound states in the continuum: From fundamental physics to emerging photonic paradigms.iScience · 2026Review
- Circular Dichroism without Absorption in Isolated Chiral Dielectric Mie Particles.ACS photonics · 2026Article
- Optical Tweezers in Emulsion Research: Principles, Advances, and Prospects.Langmuir : the ACS journal of surfaces and colloids · 2026Review
- Tunable 3D optohydrodynamic torques from optical phase gradient-driven colloidal assemblies.Science advances · 2026Article
- Low-power optical tweezers using large-diameter Gaussian and vortex beams for giant bubble trapping and rotation in fluorescent dye media.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Flexible, stretchable, on-chip optical tweezers for high-throughput bioparticle manipulation.Light, science & applications · 2026Article
- An optically driven microstructure for torque measurement in rotary molecular motors.Microsystems & nanoengineering · 2026Article
- Robust helix photo-transforming in soft matter.National science review · 2026Article
- Controlling the sign of optical forces using metaoptics.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Article
- Microfluidics to Meet Antibiotic Resistance: A Growing Research Frontier.Antibiotics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Fluorescence Imaging-Activated Microfluidic Particle Sorting Using Optical Tweezers.Biosensors · 2025Article
- Acoustophoretic system for seed separation on conveyor belts.Nature communications · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
10 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Optical sorting combines optical tweezers with diverse techniques, including optical spectrum, artificial intelligence (AI) and immunoassay, to endow unprecedented capabilities in particle sorting. In comparison to other methods such as microfluidics, acoustics and electrophoresis, optical sorting offers appreciable advantages in nanoscale precision, high resolution, non-invasiveness, and is becoming increasingly indispensable in fields of biophysics, chemistry, and materials science. This review aims to offer a comprehensive overview of the history, development, and perspectives of various optical sorting techniques, categorised as passive and active sorting methods. To begin, we elucidate the fundamental physics and attributes of both conventional and exotic optical forces. We then explore sorting capabilities of active optical sorting, which fuses optical tweezers with a diversity of techniques, including Raman spectroscopy and machine learning. Afterwards, we reveal the essential roles played by deterministic light fields, configured with lens systems or metasurfaces, in the passive sorting of particles based on their varying sizes and shapes, sorting resolutions and speeds. We conclude with our vision of the most promising and futuristic directions, including AI-facilitated ultrafast and bio-morphology-selective sorting. It can be envisioned that optical sorting will inevitably become a revolutionary tool in scientific research and practical biomedical applications.
Identifiers
What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.