Newly Demonstrated Capabilities of Low-Powered Nanotweezers May Benefit Cellular-Level Studies

Experimental setup schematic showing laser source, microscope, and imaging detector and spectrometer. The inset illustrates the two different sample configurations that were explored; red arrows correspond to the input polarization directions and black arrows depict the propagation vector. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Illinois College of Engineering)

 Using ultra-low input power densities, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have demonstrated for the first time how low-power "optical nanotweezers" can be used to trap, manipulate, and probe nanoparticles, including fragile biological samples.

The paper also demonstrated enhancement of trap stiffness of up to 2x that of a comparable continuous-wave (CW) nanotweezers and 5x that of conventional optical tweezers that employ a fs source; successful trapping and tweezing of spherical particles ranging from 80-nm to 1.2-um in diameter, metal, dielectric, and both fluorescent and non- fluorescent particles; enhancement of two-photon fluorescent signal from trapped microparticles in comparison to the response without the presence of the BNAs; enhancement of the second-harmonic signal of ~3.5x for the combined nanoparticle-BNA system compared to the bare BNAs; and fusing of Ag nanoparticles to the BNAS.