Controllable rotation of microsphere chain in dual-beam fiber-optic trap with transverse offset

Abstract

Controllable rotation of the trapped microscopic objects has traditionally been thought of one of the most valuable optical manipulation techniques. The controllable rotation of a microsphere chain was achieved by the dual-beam fiber-optic trap with transverse offset. The experimental device was made up of a PDMS chip housing two counter-propagating fibers across a microfluidic flow channel. Each fiber was coupled with different laser diode source to avoid the generation of coherent interference, both operating at a wavelength of 980 nm. Each fiber was attached to a translation stage to adjust the transverse offset distance. The polystyrene microspheres with diameter of 10 μm were chosen as the trapped particles. The microfluidic flow channel of the device was flushed with the polystyrene microspheres solution by the mechanical fluid pump. At the beginning, the two fibers were strictly aligned to each other. Five microspheres were captured as a chain parallel to the axis of the fibers. When introducing a transverse offset to the counter-propagating fibers by adjusting the translation stages, the microsphere chain was observed to rotating in the trap center. When the offset distance was set as 9 μm, the rotation period is approximately 1.2s. A comprehensive analysis has been presented of the characteristics of the rotation. The functionality of rotated chain could be extended to applications requiring microfluidic mixing or to improving the reaction speed in a localized environment, and is generally applicable to biological and medical research.