BUILDING AN OPTICAL TWEEZERS FOR LIFE SCIENCE RESEARCHES

Abstract

Optical Tweezers has evolved as a valuable tool to trap and manipulate particles. Since it was introduced in 1986 by Ashkin and colleagues, Optical Tweezers has been used in many research areas. Its applications are found on research in atomic physics, medical physics, chemistry, and more notably in biophysics and cell biology. The simplest optical tweezers can be built from a commercial optical microscope either upright or inverted. The tweezing force comes from the radiation pressure of laser light which is sent to the back of the objective lens then is focused by the lens to the particles in a cuvette or slides. The particles can be any things from atoms, molecules, bacteria, viruses, blood cells to DNA. The optical tweezers are very useful in studying biological samples because it can provide picoNewton and nanometer ranges of force hence one can study the motor properties of the particles without damaging them. There are many parameters can describe a reliable optical tweezers. These parameters depend on the laser wavelength used and the size of the particles. In this article, the process to build an optical tweezers and what optical components needed will be described. The optical tweezers described has been used to trap two size-polystyrene beads with 830 nm laser light from a diode laser. This optical tweezers will be prepared to trap and study chlorophylls of mango leaves in searching for the new method in identifying its diversity. In the future, a portable and affordable optical tweezers for life science researches will be built