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Updated: May 16, 2026

Use of Dual Optical Tweezers and Microfluidics for Single-Molecule Studies
Published on: November 18, 2022
Measuring the pressures across microfluidic droplets with an optical tweezer
Yuhang Jin1, Antony Orth, Ethan Schonbrun
1School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, 33 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
Abstract:
We introduce a novel technique that enables pressure measurements to be made in microfluidic chips using optical trapping. Pressure differentials across droplets in a microfluidic channel are determined by monitoring the displacements of a bead in an optical trap. We provide physical interpretation of the results. Our experiments reveal that our device has high sensitivity and can be operated over a wide range of pressures from several Pascals to several thousand Pascals.

