Nano-Optical Tweezers
Human DNA is two and a half nanometers in diameter; so, to pluck away a modifying molecule would take a tiny tool and a delicate touch. Researchers at the ICFO (Institute for Photonic Sciences, Barcelona, Spain) haven’t quite reached the double-helix level, but they have developed plasmonic nano-tweezers that can function “at the extremity of a mobile optical fiber, nano-engineered with a bowtie-like gold aperture. Using this approach, they have demonstrated trapping and 3D displacement of specimens as small as a few tens of nanometers using an extremely small, non-invasive laser intensity. Central to the great potential of this technique is that both trapping and monitoring of the trapped specimen can be done through the optical fiber, performing the manipulation of nano-objects in a simple and manageable way outside of the physics research lab.” MORE
Image Credit: Institute for Photonic Sciences