Influence of light pattern thickness on the manipulation of dielectric microparticles by optoelectronic tweezers

Optoelectronic tweezer (OET) is a useful optical micromanipulation technology that has been demonstrated for various applications in electrical engineering and most notably cell selection for biomedical engineering. In this work, we studied the use of light patterns with different shapes and thicknesses to manipulate dielectric micro-particles with OET. It was demonstrated that the maximum velocities of the microparticles increase to a peak and then gradually decrease as the light pattern's thickness increases. Numerical simulations were run to clarify the underlying physical mechanisms, and it was found that the observed phenomenon is due to the co-influence of horizontal and vertical dielectrophoresis forces related to the light pattern's thickness. Further experiments were run on light patterns with different shapes and objects with different sizes and structures. The experimental results indicate that the physical mechanism elucidated in this research is an important one that applies to different light pattern shapes and different objects, which is useful for enabling users to optimize OET settings for future micro-manipulation applications. (C) 2022 Chinese Laser Press

Automated summary

This study investigated the use of light patterns to manipulate dielectric micro-particles with optoelectronic tweezers (OET). The experimental results showed that the maximum velocities of the microparticles are influenced by the thickness of the light pattern. Numerical simulations revealed the underlying physical mechanisms, and further experiments demonstrated the applicability of this mechanism to different light pattern shapes and objects.