Lipid Bilayer-Integrated Optoelectronic Tweezers for Nanoparticle Manipulations

Abstract

Remotely manipulating a large number of microscopic objects is important to soft-condensed matter physics, biophysics, and nanotechnology. Optical tweezers and optoelectronic tweezers have been widely used for this purpose but face critical challenges when applied to nanoscale objects, including severe photoinduced damages, undesired ionic convections, or irreversible particle immobilization on surfaces. We report here the first demonstration of a lipid bilayer-integrated optoelectronic tweezers system for simultaneous manipulation of hundreds of 60 nm gold nanoparticles in an arbitrary pattern. We use a fluid lipid bilayer membrane with a ~5 nm thickness supported by a photoconductive electrode to confine the diffusion of chemically tethered nanoparticles in a two-dimensional space. Application of an external a.c. voltage together with patterned light selectively activates the photoconducting electrode that creates strong electric field localized near the surface. The field strength changes most significantly at the activated electrode surface where the particles tethered to the membrane thus experience the strongest dielectrophoretic forces. This design allows us to efficiently achieve dynamic, reversible, and parallel manipulation of many nanoparticles. Our approach to integrate biomolecular structures with optoelectronic devices offers a new platform enabling the study of thermodynamics in many particle systems and the selective transport of nanoscale objects for broad applications in biosensing and cellular mechanotransductions.

Patterned Optoelectronic Tweezers: A New Scheme for Selecting, Moving, and Storing Dielectric Particles and Cells

“…OET has been applied to manipulating nanowires, nanotubes, nanoparticles, dielectric beads, and living cells. [26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35] Because OET relies on light to control the application of dielectrophoresis (DEP) forces rather than relying on the photons themselves to generate force, OET systems typically exert a much stronger manipulation force for a given intensity of light compared with optical tweezers. In addition, OET is particularly well suited for massively parallel manipulation schemes.…”

Artificial Swimmers Propelled by Acoustically Activated Flagella

“…For example, chemical energy is harvested by bimetallic motors that move by self-electrophoresis, decomposing fuel asymmetrically over their surfaces [17][18][19] . Motion can also be modulated by chemical or optical gradients 20 , local analyte concentrations 21 , electrochemical control, 22 or by periodic contraction of cardiomyocytes on engineered surfaces 23,24 . Propulsion can also be derived by exploiting external fields such as magnetic [25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33] , electric 34 , light 35 , thermal, 36,37 and acoustics 32,[38][39][40][41][42][43] .…”

A Review on Optoelectrokinetics-Based Manipulation and Fabrication of Micro/Nanomaterials

“…OEK has also been used to dynamically manipulate nano-scaled entities, including the separation of nanowires [64][65][66][67], the patterning of two-dimensional nanomaterials [68], and manipulation of nanoparticles [69][70][71][72][73][74].…”