Optically Driven Gear-Based Mechanical Microtransducer for a Lab-on-a-Chip

Abstract

In this study, we propose an optically driven gear-based micro-transducer composed of a mechanical arm, a sphere, and two gears, which are fabricated by two-photon polymerization technique. Optical tweezers is employed to grasp the sphere as a force exerted point to manipulate the mechanical arm. The two gears with different diameters to form a required gear ratio are meshed for the tranducing demonstration. Thanks to the classic lever function, the mechanical arm can multiply the optical tweezers force as the request of tranducing performance. The experimental result indicates that the transducer enables precise applied forces and the directions of the micro-transducer by optical tweezers at micron scale. The ratio of rotational angles has good agreement with the gear ratio as the classic gear function. Such gear-based optically driven mechanical transducer provides a possibility for driving micron-sized complex mechanisms, which is expected to perform as a mechanical operator in micro-channels for the applications of the “Lab-on-a-chip.”