Demonstration of trapping, motion control, sensing and fluorescence detection of polystyrene beads in a multi-fiber optical trap

Abstract

We demonstrate a multi-functional optical trap capable of trapping, motion control, position sensing and fluorescence detection of chemically treated polystyrene beads, using off-the-shelve optical components. It consists of two collinearly aligned single-mode fibers separated by a spacing of 130-170mum for trapping, another single-mode fiber for probing/pumping and a fourth multi-mode fiber for optical detection. The fibers are mounted either on V-grooved Si or PDMS platforms fabricated using microfabrication and molding techniques, respectively. The result represents an important milestone towards a functional integrated trapping platform.

Launch and capture of a single particle in a pulse-laser-assisted dual-beam fiber-optic trap

“…Rapid loading and manipulation of a microsphere in air or vacuum remains challenge until now. The dual-beam optical trap based on micro-structure offers intrinsic benefits of miniaturization and integration, which is crucial for developing a practical sensor [29][30][31][32][33][34].…”

Single optical tweezers based on elliptical core fiber

“…Besides that, the rotation manipulation of a trapped micro-particle is also very fascinating [8][9][10]. Traditional optical tweezers are typically created by tightly focusing laser beams with objective lens [11][12], but compared with the bulky structure and expensive cost of traditional optical tweezers, the optical fiber tweezers provide a more flexible solution towards miniaturized, integrated traps [13][14][15]. The early optical fiber tweezers are realized by multi optical fibers, using two or more optical fiber guiding light beams crossing propagating getting optical intensity gradient distribution to manipulate the micro-particle.…”

“…Although the following integrated methods [16,17] solve this problem, the fabrication of the integrated fibers is very complex. Then as the need for further, the single fiber optical tweezers turns out [18][19][20][21][22][23][24], which is more simple and practical to be a tool to be used in the research. Zhang [25] report a single fiber optical tweezers to rotate a yeast cell by rotating the output light field pattern distribution of the LP 11 mode beam, which is realized by twisting the fiber.…”

Multi-Stability in Dual-Fiber Optical Trap

“…To enhance the trap stiffness, a Fresnel zone plate was used to gain a larger numerical aperture in E.Schonbrun's work in 2008 [4]. In recent years, the technique of optical trap is widely used to capture, translate and manipulate microscopic particles [5] or living cells [6], and there is application for cavitation studies as well [7]. New approach for measuring Brownian motion force by an abrupt tapered fiber optical tweezers was described in 2007 [8].…”