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Updated: Jun 5, 2026

Direct Force Measurements of Subcellular Mechanics in Confinement using Optical Tweezers
Published on: August 31, 2021
Supercontinuum trap stiffness measurement using a confocal approach
Zhe Zhang1, Haifeng Li, Peng Li
1Department of Electrical Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802, USA.
Abstract:
We report a novel method for characterizing the stiffness of white light supercontinuum tweezers, in which the nonlinear photonic crystal fiber used for supercontinuum generation is also utilized as an effective confocal pinhole to track the motion of a trapped bead and as a scan head to realize rapid scanning of the optical trap. By measuring the phase of the bead's motion in following the trap, a lateral stiffness value of about 7.9 μN/m was obtained with supercontinumm power of about 75 mW. Our technique can potentially allow for trap stiffness calibration along an arbitrary direction in three dimensions.
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