Latest Optical tweezers Stories
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have developed a new flow-based method for manipulating and confining single particles in free solution, a process that will help address current challenges faced by nanoscientists and engineers. “This method is a first-of-its-kind tool for manipulation and trapping of small nanoparticles in solution,” explained Charles M. Schroeder, an assistant professor in the Department of...
Flow control of single quantum dot enables measurements with nanoscale accuracy at lower cost COLLEGE PARK, Md., Feb. 11, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Finding ways to see, position, measure, and accurately manipulate nanoscale objects is an ongoing challenge for researchers developing the next generation of ultra-compact electronics, sensors and optical devices. Even the most advanced conventional microscopes are limited by diffraction of the shortest wavelength of visible light,...
Optical Society of America [ Watch The Video ] New tool for controlling particles promises to advance biological research, healthcare, and more Harnessing laser light's ability to gently push and pull microscopic particles, researchers have created the fiber-optic equivalent of the world's smallest wrench. This virtual tool can precisely twist and turn the tiniest of particles, from living cells and DNA to microscopic motors and dynamos used in biological and physical research....
Joint press release by the Saarland University and the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research Mucus coats our airways' internal surfaces. The viscous gel humidifies the lungs and prevents viruses and other small particles like diesel soot from entering the body unchecked. Previously unclear was the extent to which such nanoparticles are able to move through the lungs' mucus. Here, the research evidence was contradictory. Scientists could not explain why, in inhaled medication development,...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Scientists have demonstrated integrated arrays of emitters of "optical vortex beams" onto a silicon chip for the first time. Light in these beams, as reported to the journal Science, does not propagate in straight rays, but instead travels in a spiral fashion in a hollow conical beam shape. The beams look like a vortex or cyclone, with its light rays "twisted" either left-handed or right-handed. The researchers wrote that there is...
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. “We already know that plasmonic nanoantennas enhance local fields by up to several orders of magnitude, and thus, previously showed that we can use these structures with a regular CW laser source to make very good...
A device about the size of a dime can manipulate living materials such as blood cells and entire small organisms, using sound waves, according to a team of bioengineers and biochemists from Penn State. The device, called acoustic tweezers, is the first technology capable of touchlessly trapping and manipulating Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans), a one millimeter long roundworm that is an important model system for studying diseases and development in humans. Acoustic tweezers are also...
Inexpensive, portable devices that can rapidly screen cells for leukemia or HIV may soon be possible thanks to a chip that can produce three-dimensional focusing of a stream of cells, according to researchers. "HIV is diagnosed based on counting CD4 cells," said Tony Jun Huang, associate professor of engineering science and mechanics, Penn State. "Ninety percent of the diagnoses are done using flow cytometry." Huang and his colleagues designed a mass-producible device that can focus...
Researchers from the University of York are pioneering the development of electron microscopes which will allow scientists to examine a greater variety of materials in new revolutionary ways. The team, headed by Professor Jun Yuan and Professor Mohamed Babiker, from the University’s Department of Physics has created electron beams with orbital angular momentum – electron vortex beams – which will open the way to many novel applications including the more efficient examining of...
University of Illinois researchers have shown that by tuning the properties of laser light illuminating arrays of metal nanoantennas, these nano-scale structures allow for dexterous optical tweezing as well as size-sorting of particles. "Nanoantennas are extremely popular right now because they are really good at concentrating optical fields in small areas,” explained Kimani Toussaint, Jr., an assistant professor of mechanical science and engineering at the University of Illinois at...
