Nanotechnology
Tractor beam for cells fits inside a chip
We still can't capture spacecraft - or planes or anything like that - but a new optical particle manipulation system, now built inside a chip, can trap and precisely move biological particles, such as cells.
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This beam of light focuses about 5 millimeters above the surface of the chip, which is at least 100 times further than existing devices. In this way, it becomes possible to capture and manipulate biological particles that remain within a sterile environment, protecting both the chip and the particles from contamination.
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Small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, the device uses a beam of light emitted by a silicon chip to manipulate particles millimeters away from the chip's surface. Light can penetrate the transparent glass slides that protect samples used in biological experiments, allowing cells to be manipulated even within a sterile environment.
Optical tweezers are well-known and widely used devices - the invention of optical tweezers won the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics. They capture and manipulate particles using light, but often require bulky microscope setups. Chip-based photonic devices can offer a more compact, mass-manufactured, cheaper and high-throughput solution, disseminating the optical manipulation tool for research in biology and medicine.
Integrated optical tweezers have also been created inside chips, but they can only capture and manipulate cells that are very close to or directly on the surface of the chip. This contaminates the chip and can stress the cells, limiting compatibility with the rigors required in biological experiments.
Tal Sneh and colleagues at MIT, in the USA, solved this deficiency using a system called a phased array optical array, a set of several light emitters, arranged side by side, that can be coordinated to generate a common beam, with the large The advantage is that the individual control of each emitter allows you to control the beam with great precision and in real time.