St Andrews: New alternative to 'optical tweezing'

“Non-contact” methods (optical tweezing) exist which allow operators to grab and hold particles using light refraction and to move them around at will. These methods use a tightly focused light beam, typically delivered using a microscope, to hold and move objects of <1 micron-25 micron in size.

This has generated widespread interest and uses in biology and physics but does not allow for rotational control of trapped samples which can be useful in developing biologically and optically driven micromachines. Furthermore it is difficult to build three-dimensional structures using optical tweezers.

Key Benefits

• Optical trapping in several sites at the same time.
• The ability to rotate particles at controlled rates and in a controlled sense.
• Creation of three-dimensional structures in the trap.
• Optical micro-rotation is a substantial addition to the “optical toolkit” allowing non-contact manipulation of small objects.

Applications

Optical micro-manipulation is a growing and important area in the post-genomic era and has an increasingly expanding number of end users. These include biology laboratories in industry, universities and institutes and industrial laboratories studying development of micro-machines (for lab-on-a-chip applications: this includes developing biological laboratory systems that can study/analyse a specimen all on a slide), colloids, and bio-engineering (creation of predetermined structures that includes tissue growth and study of biological systems).

Global marketplace for biophotonics-based technologies 2005 is est.US$8billion.

IP Status

The University of St Andrews has filed for UK and international patent protection and the research group involved continues to perform R&D in Micro-manipulation with optical techniques. There are no commercial parties involved in this research area and the University would welcome enquiries from commercial parties interested in developing commercial applications of these optical Micro-manipulation techniques.