Automation of an optical tweezers

Optical tweezers is a newly developed instrument, which makes possible the manipulation of micro-optical particles under a microscope. In this paper, we present the automation of an optical tweezers which consists of a modified optical tweezers, equipped with two motorized actuators to deflect a 1 W argon laser beam, and a computer control system including a joystick. The trapping of a single bead and a group of lactoacidofilus was shown, separately. With the aid of the joystick and two auxiliary cursors superimposed on the real-time image of a trapped bead, we demonstrated the simple and convenient operation of the automated optical tweezers. By steering the joystick and then pressing a button on it, we assign a new location for the trapped bead to move to. The increment of the motion, 0.04 μm for a 20X objective, is negligible. With a fast computer for image processing, the manipulation of the trapped bead is smooth and accurate. The automation of the optical tweezers is also programmable. This technique may be applied to accelerate the DNA hybridization in a gene chip. The combination of the modified optical tweezers with the computer control system provides a tool for precise manipulation of micro particles in many scientific fields.