This chip-based "tractor-beam," which uses an intensely focused beam of light to capture and manipulate biological particles without damaging the cells, could help biologists study the mechanisms of diseases. Credits: Credit: Sampson Wilcox, RLE
Topics: Biology, Biotechnology, Optical Tweezers, Research
MIT researchers have developed a miniature, chip-based “tractor beam,” like the one that captures the Millennium Falcon in the film “Star Wars,” that could someday help biologists and clinicians study DNA, classify cells, and investigate the mechanisms of disease.
Small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, the device uses a beam of light emitted by a silicon-photonics chip to manipulate particles millimeters away from the chip surface. The light can penetrate the glass coverslips that protect samples used in biological experiments, enabling cells to remain in a sterile environment.
Traditional optical tweezers, which trap and manipulate particles using light, usually require bulky microscope setups, but chip-based optical tweezers could offer a more compact, mass manufacturable, broadly accessible, and high-throughput solution for optical manipulation in biological experiments.
However, other similar integrated optical tweezers can only capture and manipulate cells very close to or directly on the chip surface. This contaminates the chip and can stress the cells, limiting compatibility with standard biological experiments.
Using an integrated optical phased array, MIT researchers have developed a new modality for integrated optical tweezers that enables trapping and tweezing of cells more than a hundred times further away from the chip surface.
MIT engineers create a chip-based tractor beam for biological particles, Adam Zewe, MIT Press, October 3, 2024
Comments