Optical Tweezers

About Optical Tweezers

Optical trapping and tweezing is a technique that is being used in a range of applications to trap and manipulate microscopic particles and is particularly useful for biological single cell manipulation. The single cell can be held in the beam waist, the point which forms the center of the beam for further analysis such as IR or Raman spectroscopy. By trapping a number of particles in different laser beams inter molecular forces can be investigated.

Utilizing lasers makes this technique possible and Novanta designs its lasers to ensure it offers maximum success for this technique:

• A highly focused laser beam creates a force attracting particles to the center of the beam
• Our lasers can be a range of different wavelengths, with the most common wavelength being the Infrared region when working with biological samples to reduce the absorption of light energy that can cause cell heating
• Our lasers have a good beam quality with an M² close to unity and high pointing stability to maintain the position of the focus and beam waist
• Additionally, single mode fiber coupling is available on all the lasers to enable easy integration and positioning of the beam output