Dedicated optical tweezers for synchrotron experiments

Optical tweezers are widely used because they are capable of trapping small materials by highly-focused laser beams. They are highly useful for manipulating single fragile objects. Recently compact optical tweezers have been designed and developed specifically for synchrotron X-ray diffraction experiments. Samples of a few micrometers up to a few tens of micrometers size can be trapped easily. The selection and positioning of single objects out of a batch of many can be performed semi-automatically by software routines. For more information, see the paper, "Optical Tweezers for Synchrotron Radiation Probing of Trapped Biological and Soft Matter Objects in Aqueous Environments", S. C. Santucci et al., Anal. Chem., Article ASAP (DOI: 10.1021/ac200515x Publication Date (Web) May 4, 2011).