Manipulation of microparticles and red blood cells using optoelectronic tweezers

Abstract

We report the development of an optoelectronic tweezers set-up which works by light-induced dielectrophoresis mechanism to manipulate microparticles. We used thermal evaporation technique for coating the organic polymer, titanium oxide phthalocyanine (TiOPc), as a photoconductive layer on ITO-coated glass slide. Compare to the conventional optical tweezers, the technique requires optical power in μW range and provides a manipulation area of a few mm2. The set-up was used to manipulate the polystyrene microspheres and red blood cells (RBCs). The RBCs could be attracted or repelled by varying the frequency of the applied AC bias..