Opto-thermoelectric nanotweezers

Femtosecond-Pulsed Plasmonic Nanotweezers

We demonstrate for the first time plasmonic nanotweezers based on Au bowtie nanoantenna arrays (BNAs) that utilize a femtosecond-pulsed input source to enhance trapping of both Rayleigh and Mie particles. Using ultra-low input power densities, we demonstrate that the high-peak powers associated with a femtosecond source augment the trap stiffness to 2x that of nanotweezers employing a continuou...

Nanodielectrophoresis: Electronic Nanotweezers

At neutral pH, DNA is a charged molecule. As such, it responds directly to an electric field, the phenomenon of electrophoresis. In contrast, the phenomenon of dielectrophoresis occurs when there is a dc or an ac electric field gradient. In that case, the development of nonuniform electric fields causes a force on any polarizable object, charged or neutral. The term dielectrophoresis was coined...

Opto - Electronic Packaging

Holographic opto-fluidic microscopy

Over the last decade microfluidics has created a versatile platform that has significantly advanced the ways in which micro-scale organisms and objects are controlled, processed and investigated, by improving the cost, compactness and throughput aspects of analysis. Microfluidics has also expanded into optics to create reconfigurable and flexible optical devices such as reconfigurable lenses, l...

DNA nanotweezers studied with a coarse-grained model of DNA.

We introduce a coarse-grained rigid nucleotide model of DNA that reproduces the basic thermodynamics of short strands, duplex hybridization, single-stranded stacking, and hairpin formation, and also captures the essential structural properties of DNA: the helical pitch, persistence length, and torsional stiffness of double-stranded molecules, as well as the comparative flexibility of unstacked ...