Optoelectronic tweezers: a versatile toolbox for nano-/micro-manipulation

Shuailong Zhang*, Bingrui Xu, Mohamed Elsayed, Fan Nan, Wenfeng Liang, Justin K. Valley, Lianqing Liu, Qiang Huang, Ming C. Wu, Aaron R. Wheeler

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

63 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The rapid development of micromanipulation technologies has opened exciting new opportunities for the actuation, selection and assembly of a variety of non-biological and biological nano/micro-objects for applications ranging from microfabrication, cell analysis, tissue engineering, biochemical sensing, to nano/micro-machines. To date, a variety of precise, flexible and high-throughput manipulation techniques have been developed based on different physical fields. Among them, optoelectronic tweezers (OET) is a state-of-art technique that combines light stimuli with electric field together by leveraging the photoconductive effect of semiconductor materials. Herein, the behavior of micro-objects can be directly controlled by inducing the change of electric fields on demand in an optical manner. Relying on this light-induced electrokinetic effect, OET offers tremendous advantages in micromanipulation such as programmability, flexibility, versatility, high-throughput and ease of integration with other characterization systems, thus showing impressive performance compared to those of many other manipulation techniques. A lot of research on OET have been reported in recent years and the technology has developed rapidly in various fields of science and engineering. This work provides a comprehensive review of the OET technology, including its working mechanisms, experimental setups, applications in non-biological and biological scenarios, technology commercialization and future perspectives.

Original languageEnglish
JournalChemical Society Reviews
Volume11
Issue number5
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 26 Oct 2022

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