An Introduction of Optical Trapping and the Construction of a Dual Beam Optical Tweezers

Abstract

Optical tweezers give us an unprecedented ability to manipulate objects on the microscopic scale. This ability allows us to study and quantify the mechanics of microscopic objects such as blood cells, DNA, proteins, bacteria, viruses, and sperm. Many ingenious experiments have been performed over the past few years taking advantage of this tool. However, this innovation is still relatively new and many of its future applications are just being discovered. In this paper I describe the basic theory of optical trapping along with the construction, alignment, motorization, and calibration of a dual beam optical tweezers.