Abstract
Optical fiber tweezers, as a versatile tool for optical trapping and manipulation, have attracted much attention in cell trapping, manipulation, and detection. Particularly, assembly of living cells using optical fiber tweezes has become a significant attention. Advanced achievements have been made on the assembly of fully biocompatible photonic probes with biological cells, enabling optical detection in biological environment in a highly compatible manner. Therefore, in this chapter, we discuss the use of optical fiber tweezers for assembly of living photonic probes. Living photonic probes can be assembled by the trapping and assembly of multiple cells using optical fiber tweezers. These photonic probes exhibit high biocompatibility and show great promise for the bio-applications in bio-microenvironments.
Highlights
The development of optical fiber tweezers (OFTs) makes it a versatile candidate for optical trapping and manipulation of targets ranging from different dielectric particles to biological cells and biomolecules [1–3]
By designing a specially segmented tapered optical fiber, light output from the fiber can be divided into three individual beams, and E. coli bacteria can be trapped by the individual beams, further forming into branched biophotonic probes with different lengths (Figure 5)
By moving the OFTs, the formed biophotonic probes can be flexibly manipulated to different designated positions for further applications. These results show that the OFTs offer a seamless interface between optical and biological worlds for biophotonic probes formation with natural materials, and provides a new opportunity for direct sensing and detection of biological signal and information in biocompatible microenvironments
Summary
The development of optical fiber tweezers (OFTs) makes it a versatile candidate for optical trapping and manipulation of targets ranging from different dielectric particles to biological cells and biomolecules [1–3]. This is because OFTs possess exceptional advantages in manipulation flexibility, due to the simple structure with only optical fibers. Recent advances of OFTs in trapping and manipulating of cells, in assembly of living photonic probes based on biological cells, were discussed. These formed living photonic probes provide a promising approach for bio-detection in biological environments with highly biocompatibility [12, 13]
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