SCIENCE CHINA

Physics, Mechanics & Astronomy

• Review • December 2013 Vol.56 No.12: 2351–2360
85th Anniversary for the Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences doi: 10.1007/s11433-013-5355-3

Optical tweezers technique and its applications

GUO HongLian & LI ZhiYuan*
Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China

Received September 16, 2013; accepted October 30, 2013; published online November 14, 2013

Since their advent in the 1980s, optical tweezers have attracted more and more attention due to their unique non-contact and
non-invasion characteristics and their wide applications in physics, biology, chemistry, medical science and nanoscience. In
this paper, we introduce the basic principle, the history and typical applications of optical tweezers and review our recent ex-
perimental works on the development and application of optical tweezers technique. We will discuss in detail several techno-
logical issues, including high precision displacement and force measurement in single-trap and dual-trap optical tweezers, mul-
ti-trap optical tweezers with each trap independently and freely controlled by means of space light modulator, and incorpora-
tion of cylindrical vector optical beams to build diversified optical tweezers beyond the conventional Gaussian-beam optical
tweezers. We will address the application of these optical tweezers techniques to study biophysical problems such as mechani-
cal deformation of cell membrane and binding energy between plant microtubule and microtubule associated proteins. Finally
we present application of the optical tweezers technique for trapping, transporting, and patterning of metallic nanoparticles,
which can be harnessed to manipulate surface plasmon resonance properties of these nanoparticles.

optical tweezers, small particle, force measurement, nanophotonics

PACS number(s): 81.70.Fy, 87.15.La, 87.64.Mf

Citation: Guo H L, Li Z Y. Optical tweezers technique and its applications. Sci China-Phys Mech Astron, 2013, 56: 23512360, doi: 10.1007/s11433-013-
5355-3

1 Introduction and points toward the focus. A stable optical trap needs to
meet the condition that the gradient force is larger than
scattering and absorption forces. Whether this condition can
Optical tweezers (also called optical trap) are formed by a
be satisfied depends on many factors, such as the power of
highly focused laser beam. The laser beam is focused by a
incident light, the numerical aperture of the microscope
high-quality microscope objective to a spot in the specimen
objective, the size and material nature (e.g., dielectric or
plane. This spot creates an optical trap which is able to hold
metallic) of particles. In addition, the trapping force must be
a small particle at its center. As shown in Figure 1, the
large enough to overcome the random Brownian motion
forces felt by this particle consist of light scattering, absorp-
force (related to the temperature of environment) acting
tion and gradient forces due to the momentum transfer from
upon the trapped particles and pushing them to escape from
the laser to the particle. The optical forces can be decom-
the trap regions. When a microscopic particle is trapped,
posed into two types: one is scattering and absorption forces,
optical tweezers can do many things. For instance, one can
which are proportional to the Poynting vector of the optical
stick biological macromolecules such as DNA, RNA, or
field and point along the direction of the incident beam,
proteins tightly to the particle, and probe their mechanical
tending to destabilize the trap; the other is gradient force,
properties via measuring the optical force (equal to the in-
which is proportional to the gradient of the light intensity
teraction force between macromolecules) under controlled
displacement of the trapped particle. These mechanical
*Corresponding author (email: lizy@aphy.iphy.ac.cn)

© Science China Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013 phys.scichina.com www.springerlink.com
2352 Guo H L, et al. Sci China-Phys Mech Astron
Figure 1 (Color online) Principles of optical tweezers. (a) Schematic
illustration of a laser beam focused by a microscopic objective lens into a
focus spot, where a three-dimensional optical potential well forms to trap a
microscopic particle. (b) Schematic picture of optical forces exerted upon a
colloidal microscopic particle placed around the focus spot. The dominant
forces varied in different regions from a gradient force (tending to trap the
particle in the focus spot) to a scattering force (tending to push away the
particle from the focus spot), due to the complicated optical field distribu-
tion around the focus spot.
properties can well reflect the biophysical behavior and sta-
tus of these biological macromolecules.
As a popular optical technology, optical tweezers have a
long and successful history. Since Ashkin for the first time
observed the acceleration and trapping of particles by opti-
cal trap in 1970 [1], optical tweezers have been developed
from two-dimensions (2D) to three-dimensions (3D) [2].
The number of optical traps is also extended from single
trap to dual-optical traps [3], even multi-optical traps [4–6].
At the beginning, the optical trap is formed by TEM00
mode Gaussian laser beam, and then various kinds of modes
such as hollow beam [7], Laguerre-Gaussian beam [8] and
vector beam are adopted [9,10]. These special modes give
the optical trap some new characters, like orbital angular
momentum, larger trap stiffness and trap depth. These in-
struments also have evolved from simple tools to manipu-
late tiny objects to sophisticated devices under comput-
er-control that can measure displacements and forces with
nanometer and Piconewton resolutions. As to the applica-
tions of optical tweezers, they have been widely used in the
biology field, such as study of DNA elasticity [11], protein
folding-unfolding [12] and kinetics of DNA polymerase
[13]. In addition, Brownian motion of small particles [14],
ultrasensitive nanoear sound detector [15] and molecular
ruler based on plasmon coupling [16] have also been stud-
ied with optical tweezers.
In this paper, we will make a brief introduction and
comprehensive review of our recent experimental works on
the development and application of optical tweezers tech-
nique. In sect. 2 we briefly introduce the experimental setup
of our optical tweezers system including single, dual and
multiple optical tweezers setup based on Gaussian laser
beam and the key performance parameters of displacement
and force measurement precision. In sect. 3 we discuss ap-
December (2013) Vol. 56 No. 12
plication of the optical tweezers technique to study bio-
physical problem in life system via high-precision dis-
placement and force measurement over the mechanical de-
formation property of cell membrane and protein-protein
binding energy in plant microtubule. In sect. 4 we present
application of the optical tweezers technique for trapping,
transporting, and patterning of gold nanoparticles, and show
that this technique can be used to create various complicat-
ed nanostructures from unit gold nanoparticle to novel sur-
face plasmon resonance properties. In sect. 5 we discuss
development and incorporation of new technologies and
modules into our optical tweezers systems, and show the
realization of multi-trap optical tweezers with each trap in-
dependently and freely controlled by means of spatial light
modulator and realization and application of cylindrical
vector beams optical tweezers. Finally in sect. 6 we summa-
rize this paper.
2 Experimental setup of optical tweezers sys-
tem
For single/dual optical tweezers system, it is home-built
based on an inverted microscopy (Leica, DMIRB). The
schematic configuration of the experimental setup is illus-
trated in Figure 2. A 1064-nm beam of an Nd-YVO4 laser
(Coherent, compass 1064 nm, 4 W) is split into two beams
by a polarization beam splitter cube PS1. We dominantly
use this 1064 nm infrared laser in our optical tweezers be-
cause infrared light is negligibly absorbed and thus does
very little damage to biological systems, an area where op-
tical tweezers find dominant applications. In the area of
physical science, other visible laser beams, for instance, the
633 nm HeNe laser beam can be considered. A half wave
plate WP before PS1 is used for power dispensing of two
beams. Once the power is concentrated on one beam, the
system runs as single optical trap.
On the basis of this setup, more complicated and diversi-
fied configurations of optical tweezers can be constructed,
for instance, dual-trap and multi-trap optical tweezers. In
the former case, two expanded beams are coupled into the
inverted microscopy with a high numerical aperture objec-
tive (Leica, HCX PL APO, 100, NA=0.7–1.4) to form du-
al-trap optical tweezers with perpendicular polarization.
One trap can move with nanometer precision in the hori-
zontal plane by rotating the reflecting mirror M2 driven by a
dc servomotor (Newport, LTA-HL Actuator), while the
other is fixed. Vector beam convertor can be inserted into
light paths when cylindrical polarized beam is needed. The
green line represents visible light emitted from a halogen
lamp, which is used to image a sample. Hg lamp is used for
fluorescence excitation. The image of the trapped particles
can be monitored by eyepiece or CCD camera (CoolSnap fx,
pixel size 6.7 m×6.7 m).
There are two key ingredients in the successful applica-
 GUO H L, et al. Sci China-Phys Mech Astron December (2013) Vol. 56 No. 12 2353

Figure 2 (Color online) Schematic diagram of the single/dual optical tweezers system. WP, half wave plate; PS1 and PS2, polarization beam splitter cubes;
L1, L2, L1' and L2', lenses for beam expanding; M1, M2, M3 and M4, mirrors for beam steering; vector beam convertor is used to convert the Gaussian
beam to radial or azimuthal laser beam; lens L3 and tube lens are used to ensure that M2 is conjugated with the back focal plane of objective; L4 is used to
further magnify the sample; L5, lens for illumination light condensing; D1, D2 and D3, dichroic mirrors; Hg lamp is for fluorescence excitation; Halogen
lamp is for illumination of the chamber; CCD or QD is used for displacement detection of small particles. Inset is the photo of our setup.

tion of optical tweezers, which are the high-precision meas-
urement of displacement and force. A very useful physical
quantity to connect these two parameters is the stiffness of
optical trap. Near the center of focus spot, the optical trap
behaves like a mechanical spring, and the optical force is
linearly proportional (with the coefficient defined as the
stiffness) to the displacement of the trapped particle away
from the center of focus spot. The displacement of trapped
particles is detected by using a charge-coupled device (CCD)
camera or quadrant detector. The stiffness calibration is
carried out by the power spectrum analysis of particle’s
Brownian motion or Stokes fluid dynamics. For multiple
optical tweezers system, it is based on a spatial light modu-
lator (SLM) which uses a computer designed hologram to
split a collimated laser beam to several separated beams,
each of which is focused into an optical trap by a strongly
converging lens. Figure 3 is a schematic diagram of our
setup. In this figure, the red line represents 1064 nm laser.
The beam of laser is expanded by lenses L1 and L2, and
then diffracted into several beams by SLM (Holoeye Pluto).
Lenses L3 and L4 are a “4F” system, SLM and the back
focal plane of objective1 (ZEISS 100X) are conjugated in
this “4F” system. The multi-beams of laser are focused by
this objective, forming multi-optical traps. The zero-order
beam diffracted from SLM can be filtered by a glass win-
dow S which is located between L3 and L4. The trapped
particles can be imaged by either of the two objectives.
CCD1 is conjugated with the focus of objective2 (LEICA
63X), and CCD2 is conjugated with the focus of objective1.
CCD2, CCD3 and CCD4 are conjugated with different
planes of optical traps, so that we can obtain clear images of
the trapped particles in different planes imaged by objective1.
For vector laser trap, what we need to do is to put the vector
beam convertor in the light paths as shown in Figure 2.
In our system, we adopt two methods to measure the dis-
placement of trapped particles. One is forward-scattered
detection (FSD), and the other is back-scattered detection
(BSD). The FSD method is based on the interference of the
light scattered on the sphere with the non-interacting trans-
mitted light while the BSD is based on the interference of
backscattered light from the sphere and the beam reflected
from the interface. They are collected by the condenser or
objective at the back focal plane then projected on a quad-
rant detector (QD) or a position sensitive detector (PSD).
Both FSD and BSD can provide higher precision displace-
ment measurement due to its limited shot noise level even
for very small particles. The resolution of the displacement
measurement for our system reaches 1 nm. We use a power
continuously adjustable laser (0~4 W), so the force can be
adjusted from 0.1 pN to 100 pN. As a result, our optical
tweezers system can be applicable to a wide variety of sci-
entific problems ranging from biophysical mechanism stud-
ies on biological macromolecules to gold nanoparticle trap-
ping and patterning.
3 Applications of optical tweezers
3.1 Biophysics study of biological systems
By using the technique of single optical tweezers, we study
2354 Guo H L, et al. Sci China-Phys Mech Astron December (2013) Vol. 56 No. 12

Figure 3 (Color online) Schematic diagram of the multiple optical tweezers system. The red line represents the 1064 nm laser which is focused to form
optical traps by objective1, and the green line represents white illuminating light which images the trapped particles.

the mechanical property of biological cell membranes [16].
The membrane is a material barrier that isolates the cell
from the exterior environment. It also functions as a modu-
lator of cell membrane permeation. Almost all the activities
of cell are related to the cell membrane. The mechanical
characteristic of biological membrane is a very important
property distinguished from the chemical one. It represents
the intrinsic characteristic of membrane from the viewpoint
of its component and assembly. In this experiment, we trap
a 1 μm polystyrene bead, and then move the stage to make a
bottom-attached breast cancer cell close to it. We adjust the
focal plane of objective to ensure the bead and cell are con-
focal. After waiting for a few minutes to ensure the stable
combination between the cell and bead, we drag the cell
away from the bead. When the bead is displaced from the
cell membrane, a tether is formed between the bead and
membrane as shown in Figure 4(a).
Based on the experimental measurements of the trapping
force of tethered bead as shown in Figure 4(b), we obtain
the bending modulus and the surface membrane tension of
the breast cancer cell [16]. We also find that the treatment
with cytochalasin D results in a decrease of both the bend-
ing modulus and surface tension. When the membrane pro-
tein caveolin is over-expressed, similar phenomena occur in
bending modulus and surface tension. In addition, the vis-
cous resistance coefficient of the membrane is calculated
according to the dynamic tether forces obtained under dif-
ferent pulling velocities. All these results imply that we can
take the mechanical property of membrane as a criterion for
identification of normal and pathological cells and for dis-
tinguishing pathological cells before and after treatment.
The information is of great significance for disease diagno-
sis and drug screening. Application of optical tweezers in
this topic clearly indicates its unique power in biological
research.
We also apply our dual-trap optical tweezers system to
carry out binding force measurement of microtubule and
microtubule associated protein (MAP) [17]. MAP65 is one
of the families of plant microtubule bundling proteins. Its
molecular weight is about 65 kD. There are nine MAP65
genes in Arabidopsis thaliana, AtMAP65-1 to AtMAP65-9.
Purified MAP65 proteins have been found to bind and bun-
dle microtubules in vitro. Bundling of microtubules in in-
terphase in plant cells has been suggested to be important
for the formation of the interphase cortical array. Further-
more, it is indicated that MAP65 is involved in directional-
cell expansion. Therefore, we measure the unbinding force
between AtMAP65-1 and microtubule by using dual-trap

Figure 4 (Color online) (a) Image of the tether formed by membrane deformation of cell (left) due to the drag by optically trapped polystyrene bead (right).
(b) Histogram of the static tether forces.
 GUO H L, et al. Sci China-Phys Mech Astron December (2013) Vol. 56 No. 12 2355

optical tweezers. The schematic configuration of the ex-
perimental setup is shown in Figure 5(a). Each branch of
microtubule is adhered tightly with one polystyrene bead
trapped in the optical tweezers. By pulling away the two
beads and measuring the optical force as a function of their
separation distance, one can probe the internal interaction
force between the microtubule associated protein and the
microtubule, and tell how the proteins bind and unbind with
the microtubule. The measured force histograms of unbind-
ing force distributions are shown in Figure 5(b). Based on
the Bell-Evans-model of multiple bonds, we obtain kinetic
parameters such as the most probable unbinding forces for
the single bond, position of transition state and intrinsic
dissociation rate constants. The experimental result in Fig-
ure 5(b) indicates that the unbinding force is on the order of
a few tens pico-newton, which is well within the measure-
ment scope of our optical tweezers system.
3.2 Manipulation of gold nanoparticles with optical
tweezers
In addition to the standard application to biological sciences,
recently we have extended the optical tweezers techniques
to the research field of nanophotonics and plasmonics, in
particular, the trapping and manipulation of gold nanoparti-
cles. As we have mentioned, to stably trap a microscopic
object, the gradient force must overwhelm the scattering
force as well as the Brownian motion force. This condition
does not hold for a dielectric bead with size on the order of
a few tens nanometers because the gradient force is compa-
rable with the Brownian motion force. In comparison, the
gradient force for a gold nanoparticle of the similar size
would be still much larger than the Brownian force due to
the strong plasmonic interaction of light with the gold na-
noparticle. The capability of trapping and manipulating gold
nanoparticles with the non-contact and non-invasion optical
tweezers technique would offer a promising means to build
complicated plasmonic nanostructures on the basis of these
simple gold nanoparticles, such as gold nanospheres and
nanorods.
In this regard, we have demonstrated trapping and char-
acterization of multiple gold nanospheres with the single
optical tweezers system combined with dark field (DF) im-
aging [18]. The number of trapped nanospheres is quanti-
fied by the overall dark-field scattering intensity. The spec-
tra of the scattering intensity (Figure 6) show that there is
no interparticle coupling among trapped nanospheres when
the density of nanospheres in the trap is low enough as
shown in Figure 6(a), while the density of nanosphere in-
creases, the interparticle coupling of nanospheres becomes
obvious as shown in Figure 6(b). In addition, the trapping
potential of a single gold nanosphere is obtained by trapping

Figure 5 (a) Schematic diagram of the construct of beads, microtubules (MT) and AtMAP65-1. MTs are sandwiched in two trapped beads and stuck to
them by specific interaction between biotin–neutravidin. (b) Histogram of the unbinding force. Dashed lines are the calculated probability density functions
for different numbers of the bonds. Solid line, which is the sum of these three curves, is the final best fitting curve of the histogram.

Figure 6 (Color online) (a) Several spectra of the trapped gold spheres captured at ten different time points. Inset is the normalized spectra of scattering
intensity. (b) The normalized scattering spectra of the trapped single and multiple gold nanoparticles.
2356 Guo H L, et al. Sci China-Phys Mech Astron December (2013) Vol. 56 No. 12

an ensemble of gold nanospheres.

By using the dual-trap optical tweezers system as shown
in Figure 7, we demonstrate the trapping, transferring, posi-
tioning and patterning of gold nanorods (GNR) [19]. Our
optical force calculation results show that the long axis of
this anisotropic nanoscale object is parallel with the electric
field polarization direction of the incident laser beam. This
is confirmed by our experiment as shown in Figure 8, which
shows the DF images of the fixed GNRs by the dual-optical
traps when the polarization of the white light is rotated. The
two red arrows are the polarizations of the two traps, and
the white arrows are the polarization directions of the white
light. The left three GNRs are fixed by the left trap and the
right three GNRs are fixed by the right trap in these three
pictures. We can see that the long axis of the fixed GNRs
trapped by the two traps were perpendicular. This is similar
to the case of trapped GNRs in solution and unambiguously Figure 7 (Color online) Schematic diagram of dual optical tweezers for
indicates that the fixed GNR on substrate reserved its orien- gold nanoparticle patterning. P1 and P2, polarization beam splitter cubes;
L1, L2, L1′, and L2′, lenses for beam expanding; R1, R2 and R3, mirrors
tation as it is trapped in solution.
for beam steering; L4, lens for illumination light condensing; D1 and D2,
In addition, the optical tweezers can fix GNRs with de- dichroic mirrors; lenses L3 and LT (tube lens) are used to ensure that R2
sired patterns. Figure 9 shows the DF images of patterned and the back focal plane of objective are conjugated. Inset is the schematic
“IOP, CAS” by continuously transferring and fixing the illustration of gold nanorods (GNR) trapped, transported, and adhered to
the PVA polymer film on the glass coverslip to form various complicated
trapped GNRs on the substrate. The red “IOP” is written by
patterns.
using GNRs and the green “CAS” is written by gold nano-
spheres (50 nm in diameter). The peak positions of the
plasmon resonance mode for 50 nm gold sphere and 25 SPR peaks appear at different positions in the scattering
nm×73 nm nanorod are around 550 nm and 700 nm, respec- spectrum around 700 nm, as can be found in Figures10(e)
tively. That is the reason why “CAS” made by nanospheres and 10(f). Figure 10(g) is an end-to-end coupling mode that
is green while “IOP” made by GNRs is red. is formed by putting two GNRs end-to-end with a narrow
With the skills of patterning GNRs on substrates, we gap. The two GNRs are not strictly aligned along a single
pattern two GNRs more closely and form complex plas- direction but with a small inclination angle ranging from 5
monic structures that show hybrid plasmon coupling effects. to 10 degrees between them. The prominent SPR of this
Figure 10 shows the SEM images, measured DF scattering pattern also originates from the longitudinal mode along its
spectra and calculated scattering spectra of positioned single long axis, but with an apparent red shift relative to that for a
and coupled GNRs, respectively. For a single GNR as single GNR. These features originate from the coupling and
shown in Figure 10(a), both measured and calculated scat- hybridization of the two longitudinal dipolar modes excited
tering spectra [Figures 10(b) and 10(c)] show a prominent in the two GNRs. By controlling the relative polarization
longitudinal SPR peak at around 700 nm, which can be as- state of laser light in the dual-optical tweezers, more con-
cribed to a dipolar resonance mode. Our calculations are trollable ways to generate complex shapes with small dis-
based on the discrete-dipole approximation method (DDA). tances can be made based on two GNRs. These results have
When two GNRs are arranged into the “T”-shape pattern as confirmed our assumption that optical tweezers could be-
is the case depicted in Figure 10(d), two equally prominent come a promising technological route to constructing a wide

Figure 8 (Color online) Pictures of the fixed GNRs by dual-optical traps with the change of the polarization of the white light. The two red arrows are the
polarizations of the two traps, and the white arrows are the polarization directions of the white light. The left three GNRs were fixed by the left trap and the
right three GNRs were fixed by the right trap in these three pictures.
 GUO H L, et al. Sci China-Phys Mech Astron December (2013) Vol. 56 No. 12 2357

4 Development of novel optical tweezers tech-

nologies

4.1 Cylindrical vector laser trap

Currently the most popular way to build optical tweezers is

Figure 9 (Color online) Color Picture of the patterned gold nanoparticles
after the sample is dried. This picture is captured by a digital camera from
the eyepiece of the microscopy. The red “IOP” is “written” by GNRs and
the green “CAS” is “written” by gold nanospheres.
variety of plasmonic nanostructures based on several simple
units of gold nanoparticle, including nanospheres, nanorods,
nanoboxes, nanocages, and so on, for the sake of creating
different plasmon resonance properties.
to focus a TEM00 Gaussian laser beam via a microscope
objective with high numerical aperture. To expand the
scope of this technology, people have considered other
types of laser beams. Recently, we have successfully de-
veloped a cylindrical vector laser trap [10]. The simplest
way to achieve this goal is to adopt the similar setup as that
based on our Gaussian laser trap but insert a vector beam
convertor into the laser paths as shown in Figure 2. The
optical forces on metallic particles produced by cylindrical
vector beams have so far only been calculated theoretically.
No experimental results have been reported yet. With cylin-
drical vector laser trap (Figure 11), we experimentally de-
monstrate stable optical trapping of gold nanoparticles by
radially and azimuthally polarized beams [10]. The trans-
verse trapping stiffness of single gold nanoparticle is meas-
ured and compared with linearly polarized Gaussian beam.
Then we compare the trapping efficiency of cylindrical

Figure 10 SEM pictures of fixed single and complex GNRs and their scattering spectra. (a) is the SEM picture of a fixed single GNR; (b) is the measured
scattering spectrum of the fixed GNR after the sample was dried; (c) is the calculated scattering spectrum of a single GNR whose shape is shown in the upper
right corner. (d)‒(f) and (g)‒(i) are the SEM pictures of two couples of the fixed GNRs, the measured scattering spectra and the calculated scattering spectra
of the coupled GNRs.
2358 Guo H L, et al. Sci China-Phys Mech Astron December (2013) Vol. 56 No. 12

Figure 11 (Color online) (a) Experimentally generated radially and azimuthally polarized beams. The first column shows the isotropic intensity profiles of
the vector beams imaged by a laser beam analyzer without a polarization analyzer. The next two columns show the intensity cross-sections after inserting the
polarization filter with the arrows denoting the polarization direction. (b) Power spectra and corresponding trapping stiffness of gold particles with diameter
of 90 nm trapped by radially polarized, azimuthally polarized and Gaussian beams. In the figure, fc is corner frequency, and kg, ka, kr are normalized trapping
stiffness of Gaussian beam, azimuthally polarized beam and radially polarized beam, respectively.

vector laser trap with Gaussian laser trap and find that the dimensional spaces can be clearly imaged by several CCDs.
radially polarized beam exhibits a higher trapping efficiency The displacement is obtained by calculating the gray
than azimuthally polarized beam and Gaussian beam. In weighted centroid of the trapped particle’s image. Stiffness
addition, we find that the gold nanoparticles are trapped in of the trapped particle in optical trap is measured through
the annular region of the focus when azimuthally polarized the Stokes’ Fluid dynamics method. The optical force of
beam is adopted. each trapped particle can be obtained by the measured dis-
placement and stiffness. It is worthwhile to note that in our
4.2 Multiple-trap optical tweezers multiple optical tweezers system each trap, including its
position and moving direction, can be independently and
We also develop a multiple-trap optical tweezers system freely adjusted by simply controlling the status of SLM.
based on a spatial light modulator that uses computer gen-
erated holograms to create lots of simultaneous optical 4.3 Back scattered detection
tweezers in arbitrary three-dimensional configurations, each
with individually specified trapping characteristics. Intro- There are two methods that are widely used to measure dis-
duced in 1997, holographic optical traps have found appli-
cations in research and engineering ranging from funda-
mental studies of the mechanisms of phase transitions to
sorting particles. The principle for achieving this goal via
SLM is simple. The SLM with a deliberately determined
reflection amplitude and phase distribution in its pixel array
will reflect the incident laser beam into multiple laser beams
propagating in a set of pre-designated directions. These
beams will then go into the microscope objective and be
focused into a series of pre-designated focus spots in the
focusing plane of the lens. Each focus spot still serves as an
optical potential well to trap microscopic particle if the laser
power is strong enough. In practice, the reflection amplitude
and phase distribution of the SLM can be calculated by us-
ing certain high-efficiency inverse-problem solution algo- Figure 12 (a)–(h) Pictures of trapped 2 m polystyrene beads (left) from
2 to 9 and the corresponding phase distribution of the SLM (right).
rithms.
With multiple optical tweezers, we can trap several parti-
cles simultaneously and array them in three dimensional
spaces [6]. Figure 12(a) to (h) show the trapped 2 μm poly-
styrene beads with particle number from 2 to 9 and their
corresponding phase masks on the SLM. Figure 13 is three
trapped particles arrayed in different axial positions. We
measure the displacement and optical force of the trapped Figure 13 (a)–(c) Picture of the trapped three particles arrayed in differ-
particles simultaneously. All of the trapped particles in three ent axial positions with 1 μm longitudinal interval.
 GUO H L, et al. Sci China-Phys Mech Astron December (2013) Vol. 56 No. 12 2359

placement of the particles. One is forward-scattered detec-
tion (FSD), and the other is back-scattered detection (BSD).
Although the FSD gets a much stronger signal compared
with the BSD, it is not convenient for gold nanoparticles
detection because it is difficult to visualize the particles
simultaneously by dark-field (DF) imaging with FSD
method. In the reflection-based setup a condenser lens is no
longer required and this makes the setup more versatile.
Furthermore, since the laser trap and back scattered light
share the same objective, the noise of mechanical drift can
be greatly eliminated. Recently we have improved the effi-
ciency and sensitivity of BSD approach by taking into full
account these technical issues and developed a tool that is
more suitable for optical observation of trapped gold nano-
particles [20]. Figure 14 shows the experimental setup of
our BSD system. The back scattered light off a gold particle
in the trap (inset) and the back reflection beam are collected
by the objective and projected onto the PSD. A pinhole and
a central obstruction filter are used to eliminate the back-
ground noise.
Combining the backscattered light detection technique
with the optical tweezers, we measure the trapping stiffness
of single gold nanosphere (GNP) and gold nanorod (GNR)
particles in three-dimensions as shown in Figures 15(a) and
(b) [20]. The results show that the spring constants in the
polarization direction of the trapping laser is weaker than in
other two directions for both GNPs and GNRs, and the po-
larization of laser beam has larger influence on GNRs than
on GNPs.
5 Conclusion
In summary, we have made a brief introduction to the prin-
ciple and history of optical tweezers and presented a com-
prehensive review of our recent experimental works on the
development and application of optical tweezers technique.
We have discussed our versatile setup including single, dual,
multiple and cylindrical vector laser traps. In our system,
we have combined a variety of techniques such as dark field
imaging, back scattered detecting and spectrum measure-
ment with the optical tweezers, making them more powerful
to be used according to different needs. With these instru-
ments, we have studied the membrane elasticity and un-
binding force of microtubule and its associated protein,
which will be very helpful for further understanding the

Figure 14 (Color online) Schematic diagram of optical trapping setup with BSD.

Figure 15 (Color online) (a) Power spectra of GNPs with diameter of 90 nm in the trap for x, y and z direction; (b) Power spectra of GNRs with diameter
of 40 nm and length of 96 nm in the trap for x, y and z direction. The corner frequency f and spring constant in x, y, z directions have been indicated in the
figure explicitly.
2360 Guo H L, et al. Sci China-Phys Mech Astron
kinetics of cell membrane and protein. We have extended
the optical tweezers technology to nanophotonics and nano-
plasmonics regime and studied the mechanical and optical
properties of gold nanoparticles at microscopic level. By
using the dual-trap optical tweezers technique, we have
been able to pattern and position the gold nanoparticles with
desired configuration on substrate and find that the surface 10
plasmonic resonance can be modulated easily by these arti-
ficial plasmonic nanostructures. We have developed the 11
multiple optical tweezers technology, and use it to array
12
micrometer particles in 3D spaces, in which each particle
can be independently manipulated and displaced. All these
works indicate that optical tweezers system is a very useful 13
tool that has great potentials in life sciences and nano- sci-
ences. 14
The authors would like to thank Dr. LI JiaFang, QU E, LING Lin, HUANG 15
Lu, ZHOU Fei, for useful contributions.
16
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