光热效应用于光纤光镊焦点位置的研究

光镊是利用光穿过处于系统焦点的物体时产生的动量变化对其施加力的作用,因此确定光镊系统焦点位置是极其重要的.但目前缺少有效确定光镊焦点的方法.本文提出利用测量皮安培量级电流的膜片钳技术,基于光在溶液中产生的光热效应来确定光纤端面出射光斑的焦点.基于水的吸收光谱,选用波长为980nm、845nm和功率为100mW的激光作为光源.由于光热效应引起溶液电导的改变,影响流过玻璃微电极的电流,再用标准温度引起电流变化对膜片器放大器记录的电流标定,将电流值转换成温度值,获得微电极尖端点的温升值.用三维微操纵器控制玻璃微电极的空间位置,获得温度空间分布,从而确定该光斑焦点位置.

Focus Location Measurement of Fiber Optic Tweezer Based on the Photothermal Effect

Fiber optic tweezer is an effective method in biomedical applications that can be used to operate the objective in a microscale. It employs the moment changes when the photon passes through a small particle to generate a weak force on the particle. So the accurate control of the focus is the most important thing for the application of the tweezer. However, the tweezer is usually used in liquid environment. So the focus location measurement becomes extremely important and this cannot be easily obtained through the common CCD technology. In order to solve this problem, the Patch Clamp technology is employed, which has been successfully used in the electrophysiology field. In this technique, a micro pipette filled with the extracellular solution bearing a mega Ohm resistance, can give rise to a microampere current measuring accuracy. Based on the optical characteristics of the pure water and the FTIR result proves that the optical characteristics extracellular solution are quite close to pure water, 845 nm and 980 nm wavelength are chosen as the operating wavelength. The photothermal effect is generated by the solution absorbed the optical energy, and this effect can also cause the microampere current changes according to the Ohm′s law. In the experiment, the common communication fiber SMF28 is employed to fabricate a fiber-optic tweezer, and the light passes through the tweezer and incident to the solution. Following the scattering and absorption effect, the photothermal effect dominates the region of stimulation. When the micropipette filling with the solution is irradiated by the tweezer, the resistance of the micropipette will change determined by the temperature effect. Based on the scale of the micropipette, say 1 micro meter or so, the spot of the tweezer output can be measured through the micropipette movement under a precision control by a three-dimensional controller. In this way, a fine variable of the focus of the tweezer can be obtained when the wavelength switched.