A Minimal Optical Trapping and Imaging System

A Minimal Optical Trapping and Imaging Microscopy System

We report the construction and testing of a simple and versatile optical trapping apparatus, suitable for visualizing individual microtubules (∼25 nm in diameter) and performing single-molecule studies, using a minimal set of components. This design is based on a conventional, inverted microscope, operating under plain bright field illumination. A single laser beam enables standard optical trap...

Determination of experimental Tumor Volume of a mouse using optical imaging system in different processing stages

Optical Trapping

An optical trap or “optical tweezers” is a device which can apply and measure piconewton sized forces on micron sized dielectric objects under a microscope using a highly focused light beam. It allows very detailed manipulations and measurements of several interesting systems in the fields of molecular and cell biology and thus acts as a major tool in biophysics. They are used in biological exp...

Combined acoustic and optical trapping

Combining several methods for contact free micro-manipulation of small particles such as cells or micro-organisms provides the advantages of each method in a single setup. Optical tweezers, which employ focused laser beams, offer very precise and selective handling of single particles. On the other hand, acoustic trapping with wavelengths of about 1 mm allows the simultaneous trapping of many, ...

Double nanohole optical trapping: dynamics and protein-antibody co-trapping.

A double nanohole in a metal film can optically trap nanoparticles such as polystyrene/silica spheres, encapsulated quantum dots and up-converting nanoparticles. Here we study the dynamics of trapped particles, showing a skewed distribution and low roll-off frequency that are indicative of Kramers-hopping at the nanoscale. Numerical simulations of trapped particles show a double-well potential ...