10 Facts About Optical tweezers

1.

Optical tweezers are scientific instruments that use a highly focused laser beam to hold and move the microscopic and sub-microscopic objects like atoms, nanoparticles and droplets, in a manner similar to tweezers.

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2.

Optical tweezers are used in biology and medicine, nanoengineering and nanochemistry, quantum optics and quantum optomechanics.

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3.

Optical tweezers traps allowed these biophysicists to observe the forces and dynamics of nanoscale motors at the single-molecule level; optical trap force-spectroscopy has since led to greater understanding of the stochastic nature of these force-generating molecules.

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4.

Optical tweezers have proven useful in other areas of biology as well.

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5.

In 2003 the techniques of optical tweezers were applied in the field of cell sorting; by creating a large optical intensity pattern over the sample area, cells can be sorted by their intrinsic optical characteristics.

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6.

Optical tweezers have been used to probe the cytoskeleton, measure the visco-elastic properties of biopolymers, and study cell motility.

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7.

Optical tweezers are capable of manipulating nanometer and micron-sized dielectric particles by exerting extremely small forces via a highly focused laser beam.

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8.

Optical tweezers traps are very sensitive instruments and are capable of the manipulation and detection of sub-nanometer displacements for sub-micron dielectric particles.

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9.

Optical tweezers based on Laguerre-Gaussian beams have the unique capability of trapping particles that are optically reflective and absorptive.

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10.

Recent updated version of the evanescent field optical tweezers makes use of extended optical landscape patterns to simultaneously guide a large number of particles into a preferred direction without using a waveguide.

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