Optical tweezers are tools made of light that enable contactless pushing, trapping, and manipulation of objects, ranging from atoms to space light sails. Since the pioneering work by Arthur Ashkin in the 1970s, optical tweezers have evolved into sophisticated instruments and have been employed in a broad range of applications in the life sciences, physics, and engineering. These include accurate force and torque measurement at the femtonewton level, microrheology of complex fluids, single micro- and nano-particle spectroscopy, single-cell analysis, and statistical-physics experiments. This roadmap provides insights into current investigations involving optical forces and optical tweezers from their theoretical foundations to designs and setups. It also offers perspectives for applications to a wide range of research fields, from biophysics to space exploration.

Roadmap for optical tweezers

Optical tweezers have revolutionised micromanipulation from physics and biology to material science. However, the high laser power involved in optical trapping can damage biological samples. In this context, indirect trapping of microparticles and objects using fluid flow fields has assumed great importance. It has recently been shown that cells and particles can be turned in the pitch sense by opto-plasmonic heating of a gold surface constituting one side of a sample chamber. We extend that work to place two such hotspots in close proximity to each other to form a very unique configuration of flow fields forming an effective quasi-three-dimensional ‘trap’, assisted by thermophoresis. This is effectively a harmonic trap confining particles in all three dimensions without relying on other factors to confine the particles close to the surface. We use this to show indirect trapping of different types of upconverting particles and cells, and also show that we can approach a trap stiffness of 40 fN μm−1 indicating a weak confinement regime without relying on feedback.

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A hydro-thermophoretic trap for microparticles near a gold-coated substrate

Mechanical properties of particle laden interfaces is crucial for various applications. For water droplets containing soft microgel particles, passive microrheology studies have revealed that the dynamically varying surface area of the evaporating drop results in a viscous to viscoelastic transition along the plane of the interface. However, the behaviour of the medium orthogonal to the interface has been elusive to study using passive microrheology techniques. In this work, we employ optical tweezers and birefringent probe particles to extract the direction-resolved viscoelastic properties of the particle–laden interface. By using special types of birefringent tracer particles, we detect not only the in-plane translational mode but also the out-of-plane translational (perpendicular to the interface) and rotational modes. We first compare different passive methods of probing the viscoelasticity of the microgel laden interface of sessile drop and then study the modes perpendicular to the interface and the out-of-plane rotational mode using optical tweezers based passive microrheology. The viscoelasticity of the interface using two different methods, i.e., multiple-particle tracking passive microrheology using video microscopy and by trapping birefringent tracer particles in optical tweezers, relying on different models are studied and found to exhibit comparable trends. Interestingly, the mode orthogonal to the interface and the rotational mode also show the viscous to viscoelastic transition as the droplet evaporates, but with lesser viscoelasticity during the same evaporation time than the in-plane mode.

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Temporal evolution of viscoelasticity of soft colloid laden air–water interface: a multiple mode microrheology study

Typically a rigid body can have three degrees of rotational freedom. Among these, there can be two types of out-of-plane rotational modes, called the pitch and the roll. The pitch motion is typically to turn the particle along an axis orthogonal to the axis of symmetry. However, rotation about the axis of symmetry (called the roll motion) has so far not been shown in optical tweezers. It is here that we use a hexagonal shaped particle (NaYF4) which prefers to align side on with the optical tweezers [Rodriguez-Sevilla et al., Nano Letters 16, 8005 (2016)]. In this work, we find that the stable configuration of the hexagonal particle changes while using one beam and two beams, so that when one of the tweezers beams is switched on and off, the particle tends to switch between the different configurations. Thus we get a controlled roll motion. This is the first time that controlled partial roll motions have been generated in optical tweezers. 

Generation of partial roll rotation in a hexagonal NaYF<sub>4</sub> particle by switching between different optical trapping configurations

Optical trapping allows the trapping and manipulation of dielectric microparticles. However, full control over all six degrees of freedom of the trapped object is challenging. Here, we use ferromagnetic iron-doped upconversion microparticles for simultaneous optical trapping and magnetic micromanipulation that allows full control over all translational and rotational degrees of freedom. These microparticles have a low absorption that allows optical trapping and a high coercivity and saturation magnetization that allow magnetic manipulation. The particles will enable micromanipulation experiments, for example, in single-molecule biophysics. 

Simultaneous Optical Trapping and Electromagnetic Micromanipulation of Ferromagnetically Doped NaYF4 Microparticles

Conventionally, the work of adhesion at the nanoscale is estimated using an atomic force microscope with a tip of the size of 10 nm. It is pressed into a surface with nano-Newton forces and then retracted to ascertain when the tip breaks away from the surface. Thus this ensures “hard probing” of a surface. However there can be another configuration where the particle is barely placed into the surface when the work of adhesion attaches the particle to the surface and this can be called “soft probing”. In this configuration, if a birefringent particle is confined in linearly polarized optical tweezers, and then the surface is moved in the direction tangential to the plane, a rolling motion can be induced. Study of this rolling motion can also show the work of adhesion. We use this configuration to find the rolling work of adhesion of a 3 μm diameter birefringent particle on a glass surface. We go on to study the effects of changing the surface to a hydrophobic slippery surface like polydimethyl siloxane (PDMS). Then we go on to show that even 500 nm diameter diamonds bearing nitrogen vacancy (NV) centers which are birefringent due to the stresses on the crystal could also be trapped and rolled to generate pitch (out-of-plane rotation) motion with 50 nm contact diameters. We find that this mode of soft probing yields a work of adhesion of about 1 mJ m−2 while the conventional nanoscale probing with atomic force microscopes (AFM) yields about 50 mJ m−2.

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Estimation of rolling work of adhesion at the nanoscale with soft probing using optical tweezers

A colloidal particle placed inside the cell cytoplasm is enmeshed within a network of cytoskeletal fibres immersed in the cytosolic fluid. The translational mode is believed to yield different rheological parameters than the rotational mode, given that these modes stretch the fibers differently. We compare the parameters for Michigan Cancer Foundation-7 (MCF-7) cells in this manuscript and find that the results are well comparable to each other. At low values of 0 Hz viscosity, the rotational and translational viscoelasticity matches well. However, discrepancies appear at higher values which may indicate that the cytoskeletal modes involved in rotation and translation of the particle are getting invoked. We also show that the 0 Hz viscosity increases as the cell ages under the conditions of constant room temperature of 25°C on the sample chamber.

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Comparison of translational and rotational modes towards passive rheology of the cytoplasm of MCF-7 cells using optical tweezers

Up-converting particles (UCP) absorb wavelengths in IR region and emit light in visible region by multiphoton absorption process. When optically trapped with 975 nm laser, these particles show active Hot Brownian Motion (HBM) due to the temperature difference created across the particle by the trapping laser. This is akin to an active particle optically confined in a tweezers with properly oriented motion. However, the activity vanishes when trapped with 1064 nm laser. We carefully maneuver the activity dependence of UCPs on laser wavelength to build a Stirling engine. A Stirling cycle consists of an isothermal expansion followed by isochoric cooling, isothermal compression and isochoric heating. Here, activity of the UCP in an optical trap is analogous to effective temperature which is controlled by the 975 nm laser. Whereas, the confinement of the trapped particle is similar to volume which can be altered by changing the trap stiffness of the 1064 nm laser trap. In this work, We first trap a UCP simultaneously with 1064 nm laser and 975 nm laser. Gradually decreasing 1064 nm laser power keeping 975 nm laser power constant decreases the trap stiffness resulting in less confinement of the UCP while keeping the activity constant. This process is considered as isothermal expansion. There can also be another process where 975 nm is increased and 1064 nm laser power is reduced leaving the total intensity constant. That would amount to isochoric process. We explore all these processes towards the Stirling cycle.

Gokul Nalupurackal

Papers

Estimation of rolling work of adhesion at the nanoscale with soft probing using optical tweezers

A hydro-thermophoretic trap for microparticles near a gold-coated substrate

Simultaneous Optical Trapping and Electromagnetic Micromanipulation of Ferromagnetically Doped NaYF4 Microparticles

Comparison of translational and rotational modes towards passive rheology of the cytoplasm of MCF-7 cells using optical tweezers

Towards Stirling engine from a single up-converting particle confined in an optical trap at pump-wavelength exhibiting Hot Brownian Motion