Optical Trapping and Manipulation Using Optical Fibers

Abstract

An optical trap forms a restoring optical force field to immobilize and manipulate tiny objects. A fiber optical trap is capable of establishing the restoring optical force field using one or a few pieces of optical fiber, and it greatly simplifies the optical setup by removing bulky optical components, such as microscope objectives from the working space. It also inherits other major advantages of optical fibers: flexible in shape, robust against disturbance, and highly integrative with fiber-optic systems and on-chip devices. This review will begin with a concise introduction on the principle of optical trapping techniques, followed by a comprehensive discussion on different types of fiber optical traps, including their structures, functionalities and associated fabrication techniques. A brief outlook to the future development and potential applications of fiber optical traps is given at the end.