Improvement of the axial trapping effect using azimuthally polarised trapping beam

A dual optical tweezers system, which consists of a doughnut mode optical tweezer (DMOT) with the azimuthally polarised trapping beam and a solid mode optical tweezer (SMOT) with the Gauss trapping beam was constructed to compare the axial trapping effect of DMOT and SMOT. The long-distance axial trapping of ST68 microbubbles (MBs) achieved by DMOT was more stable than that of SMOT. Moreover the axial trapping force measured using the viscous drag method, was depended on the diameter of the particle, the laser power, and the numerical aperture (NA) of the objective lens. The measurement of the axial trapping force and the acquisition of CCD images of trapping effect confirmed that the DMOT showed excellent axial trapping ability than SMOT. A simple and effective method is developed to improve axial trapping effect using the azimuthally polarized beam as trapping beam. This is helpful for the long-distance manipulating of particles especially polarised biological objects in axial direction.