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Fiber Optical Tweezers for Manipulation and Sensing of Bioparticles

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Handbook of Photonics for Biomedical Engineering

Abstract

Optical tweezers have been an important tool in biology and physics for studying single molecules and colloidal systems. Compared with optical tweezers built with microscope objectives, fiber optical tweezers are compact, versatile, readily integratable, and robust to environmental fluctuations. Fiber optical tweezers can provide a solution for cost reduction and miniaturization, and these optical tweezers can be potentially used in microfluidic systems. However, the existing fiber optical tweezers have the following limitations: (i) lack of fundamental understanding of some novel fiber optical trapping systems, (ii) lack of the ability to manipulate multiple particles simultaneously and limited functionalities, and (iii) low trapping efficiency due to weakly focused beams. In this chapter, we summarize our recent work on novel fiber optical trapping systems to address the abovementioned limitations. With an enhanced understanding of the inclined dual-fiber optical tweezers (DFOTs) system, multiple traps have been experimentally created at different vertical levels with adjustable separations and positions. Furthermore, multiple functionalities have been achieved and studied with the help of multiple traps. To improve the trapping efficiency, superfocusing effects have been experimentally demonstrated with a fiber-based surface plasmonic (SP) lens. A focus size that is comparable to the smallest achievable focus size of high NA objective lenses has been achieved on a fiber end face. Three-dimensional subwavelength trapping beyond the near-field has been realized experimentally for the first time with fiber optical tweezers, demonstrating the significant improvement of the trapping efficiency. With significantly enhanced functionalities and trapping efficiency, these fiber optical tweezers are expected to find unprecedented applications in integrated microfluidic systems for biological studies.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, 100 Institute Rd, 01606, Worcester, MA, USA

    Yuxiang Liu

  2. Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Maryland, 2108 Glenn L. Martin Hall, Building 088, 20742, College Park, MD, USA

    Miao Yu

Authors
  1. Yuxiang Liu
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  2. Miao Yu
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yuxiang Liu .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electronic Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong

    Aaron Ho-Pui Ho

  2. School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea (Republic of)

    Donghyun Kim

  3. Department of Electronic and Information Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong

    Michael G. Somekh

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Liu, Y., Yu, M. (2017). Fiber Optical Tweezers for Manipulation and Sensing of Bioparticles. In: Ho, AP., Kim, D., Somekh, M. (eds) Handbook of Photonics for Biomedical Engineering. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5052-4_22

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