2D optical manipulation and assembly of shape complementary planar microstructures

Optical trapping and manipulation offer great flexibility as a non-contact microassembly tool. Its application to the assembly of microscale building blocks may open new doors for micromachine technology. In this work, we demonstrate all-optical assembly of microscopic puzzle pieces in a fluidic environment using programmable arrays of trapping beams. Identical shape-complimentary pieces are optically fabricated with submicron resolution using two-photon polymerization (2PP) technique. These are efficiently assembled into space-filling tessellations by a multiple-beam optical micromanipulation system. The flexibility of the system allows us to demonstrate both user-interactive and computer-automated modes of serial and parallel assembly of microscale objects with high spatial and angular positioning precision. (c) 2007 Optical Society of America.