Holographic optical beam shaping techniques have advanced optical tweezers in the past years, because the allow complex trapping configurations to overcome current challenges in applications in fluidic and biomedical systems.

Holographically generated higher-order light modes, for example, can induce highly structured and ordered three-dimensional optical potential landscapes to create assemblies of nanocontainers or biohybrid nano robots, and can be used as a tool to explore the inner cell, paving the way to optically-assisted analysis of diseases. Tailored light fields can also be implemented to induce non-optical forces. Optoelectronic tweezers take advantage of dielectrophoretic forces to trap microstructures in a massively parallel way. Photophoretic trapping makes use of thermal forces and by this means is perfectly suited for trapping absorbing particles in dynamic light cages or to guide droplets.

Therefore, the combination of holographically tailored light fields with complementary dielectrophoretic and photophoretic trapping provides a holistic approach to novel optical nano- and microassembly scenarios of bio-hybrid or fluidic matter.


Wednesday, March 12, 2014, 10:30. Seminar Room

Hosted by Prof. Niek van Hulst