Improvement of Transverse Trapping Efficiency of Optical Tweezers

Transverse trapping efficiency of optical tweezers is important in many force measurement applications. For improving the transverse trapping efficiency, we propose a simple scheme in which the Gaussian beam does not fully cover the aperture of the objective. Both experiment and theoretical simulation qualitatively demonstrate the scheme. It is expected that the results will be useful for the design of optical tweezers.     

Calculation of optical trapping forces on dielectric spheres at an oil-water interface with ray-optics model

The transverse trapping forces on a dielectric sphere located at an oil-water interface are theoretically investigated with the ray-optics model. The transverse trapping forces rely on the internal property of the particle-interface system, and increase with either the decrease of three phase contact angles at the oil- water interface or the use of oil phase with low refractive index. The numerical results also show that the transverse trapping forces can be improved by either decreasing the numerical aperture of the microscope objective or shrinking the diameter of the trapping laser beam.     

Measurement of interaction force between RGD-peptide and Hela cell surface by optical tweezers

Since RGD peptides (R: arginine; G: glycine; D: aspartic acid) are found to promote cell adhesion, they are modified at numerous materials surface for medical applications such as drug delivery and regenerative medicine. Peptide-cell surface interactions play a key role in the above applications. In this letter, we study the adhesion force between the RGD-coated bead and Hela cell surface by optical tweezes. The adhesion is dominated by the binding of α5β1 and RGD-peptide with higher adhesion probability and stronger adhesion strength compared with the adhesion of bare bead and cell surface. The binding force for a single α5β1 -GRGDSP pair is determined to be 16.8 pN at a loading rate of 1.5 nN/s. The unstressed off-rate is 1.65 × 10-2s-1 and the distance of transition state for the rigid binding model is 3.0 nm.     

基于自回归模型的光阱中粒子运动模拟

通过分析光阱中颗粒位移信号特性, 建立描述粒子受限布朗运动过程的自回归模型, 进而提出了一种基于自回归模型的光阱中颗粒运动信号模拟的新方法. 对半径为1 μm的粒子处于光阱刚度分别为10, 20, 50 pN/μm 光阱时的位移信号进行了模拟, 得到的模拟位移信号的自相关函数与理论值相一致. 为了进一步阐明自回归模型的有效性, 在相同光阱参数下, 分别采用自回归模型与蒙特卡罗方法模拟光阱中微粒的位移信号, 采用功率谱法分别对两种模拟方法所得的微粒位移标定光阱刚度, 结果表明自回归模型方法能够取得和蒙特卡洛法相同的精度. 因此, 本文为分析光阱中粒子的随机运动提出了一种新的模拟方法, 可以用来对光阱中的噪声及特性进行分析. 关键词： 光阱 布朗运动 信号模拟 自回归模型     

Manipulation of Nanoparticles Using Dark-Field-Illumination Optical Tweezers with Compensating Spherical Aberration

Based on our previous investigation of optical tweezers with dark field illumination [Chin. Phys. Left. 25（2008）329] nanoparticles at large trap depth are better viewed in wide field and real time for a long time, but with poor forces. Here we present the mismatched tube length to compensate for spherical aberration of an oil-immersion objective in a glass-water interface in an optical tweezers system for manipulating nanoparticles. In this way, the critical power of stable trapping particles is measured at different trap depths. It is found that trap depth is enlarged for trapping nanoparticles and trapping forces are enhanced at large trap depth. According to the measurement, 70-nm particles are manipulated in three dimensions and observed clearly at large appropriate depth. This will expand applications of optical tweezers in a nanometre-scale colloidal system.     

Monte-Carlo simulation of effective stiffness of time-sharing optical tweezers

<正>The Brownian motion of a polystyrene bead trapped in a time-sharing optical tweezers(TSOT) is numerically simulated by adopting Monte-Carlo technique.By analyzing the Brownian motion signal,the effective stiffness of a TSOT is acquired at different switching frequencies.Simulation results confirm that for a specific laser power and duty ratio,the effective stiffness varies with the frequency at low frequency range,while at high frequency range it keeps constant.Our results reveal that the switching frequency can be used to control the stability of time-sharing optical tweezers in a range.