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Published on: October 13, 2011
Opto-thermophoretic fiber tweezers
Abhay Kotnala1, Yuebing Zheng1
1Department of Mechanical Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering Program and Texas Materials Institute, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA.
Abstract:
Recent advances in opto-thermophoretic tweezers open new avenues for low-power trapping and manipulation of nanoparticles with potential applications in colloidal assembly, nanomanufacturing, life sciences, and nanomedicine. However, to fully exploit the opto-thermophoretic tweezers for widespread applications, the enhancement of their versatility in nanoparticle manipulations is pivotal. For this purpose, we translate our newly developed opto-thermophoretic tweezers onto an optical fiber platform known as opto-thermophoretic fiber tweezers (OTFT). We have demonstrated the applications of OTFT as a nanoparticle concentrator, as a nanopipette for single particle delivery, and as a nanoprobe. The simple setup and functional versatility of OTFT would encourage its use in various fields such as additive manufacturing, single nanoparticle-cell interactions, and biosensing.
