A Versatile Optoelectronic Tweezer System for Micro-Objects Manipulation: Transportation, Patterning, Sorting, Rotating and Storage

Abstract

Non-contact manipulation technology has a wide range of applications in the manipulation and fabrication of micro/nanomaterials. However, the manipulation devices are often complex, operated only by professionals, and limited by a single manipulation function. Here, we propose a simple versatile optoelectronic tweezer (OET) system that can be easily controlled for manipulating microparticles with different sizes. In this work, we designed and established an optoelectronic tweezer manipulation system. The OET system could be used to manipulate particles with a wide range of sizes from 2 μm to 150 μm. The system could also manipulate micro-objects of different dimensions like 1D spherical polystyrene microspheres, 2D rod-shaped euglena gracilis, and 3D spiral microspirulina. Optical microscopic patterns for trapping, storing, parallel transporting, and patterning microparticles were designed for versatile manipulation. The sorting, rotation, and assembly of single particles in a given region were experimentally demonstrated. In addition, temperatures measured under different objective lenses indicate that the system does not generate excessive heat to damage bioparticles. The non-contact versatile manipulation reduces operating process and contamination. In future work, the simple optoelectronic tweezers system can be used to control non-contaminated cell interaction and micro-nano manipulation.

Parallel Manipulation and Flexible Assembly of Micro-Spiral via Optoelectronic Tweezers

“…For the sample, the permittivity and conductivity of DI water are set at 80 and 1.5 × 10 −3 S/m, respectively ( Zhang et al, 2019 ). The frequency is set as 100 kHz, based on a previous experiment ( Liang et al, 2021a ). The results show that the value of permittivity and conductivity will be different.…”

“…Moreover, it seems that the micro-spiral structure was seen as a whole body, and the mechanism of the spiral structure was not clearly explained in the reference. In our previous work ( Liang et al, 2021a ; Liang et al, 2021b ), the manipulation of particles with different dimensional shapes was achieved by OETs, and the size range of a single particle is from 2 to 150 μm. We first utilize the OETs to manipulate such a large-size micro-spiral structure.…”

Recent Advances in Field‐Controlled Micro–Nano Manipulations and Micro–Nano Robots

“…[91] The basic structure construction of optical control system for OET is shown in Figure 3C-i. [92] For real-time display and observation of the optical path, the image of the photoelectric microfluidic chip passes through the objective lens and form a parallel optical path. The size of the optical path is scaled through a set of lens groups, to a size consistent with the effective area of image sensor charge-coupled device (CCD).…”

Integrated Assembly and Photopreservation of Topographical Micropatterns

“…This approach has advanced rapidly in recent years, and preserves many of the advantages of the conventional methods while being easy‐to‐implement and allowing for cost‐effective operation. Among different optical micromanipulation techniques, optoelectronic tweezers (OET) has proven to be particularly useful for the assembly of large numbers of micro‐ and nano‐objects in parallel, [ 22–31 ] and also for the assembly of micro‐objects with “large” sizes (with at least one dimension greater than 150 µm). [ 32–34 ] However, one limitation for OET assembly (and also for other optical assembly techniques) is that the process must be performed in a fluidic environment, such that the fluid must be removed afterward, often by evaporation, a chaotic process that can destroy the structure that has (up to that point) been carefully assembled.…”

“…This approach has advanced rapidly in recent years, and preserves many of the advantages of the conventional methods while being easy-to-implement and allowing for cost-effective operation. Among different optical micromanipulation techniques, optoelectronic tweezers (OET) has proven to be particularly useful for the assembly of large numbers of micro-and nano-objects in parallel, [22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31] and also for the assembly of micro-objects with "large" sizes (with at least one dimension greater than 150 µm). [32][33][34] However, one limitation for OET assembly (and also for other optical assembly techniques) Micromanipulation techniques that are capable of assembling nano/micromaterials into usable structures such as topographical micropatterns (TMPs) have proliferated rapidly in recent years, holding great promise in building artificial electronic and photonic microstructures.…”