Studies of different variations of optical tweezers with digital video microscopy

Abstract

In this thesis, different variations to optical tweezing and their different applications are presented. Optical tweezers coupled with digital video microscopy is a powerful tool to study the mechanics and dynamics of various mescopic systems. The objective of the thesis is to integrate optical microscopy with more complex optical designs to construct different variations of optical tweezers and study their plausible applications. The thesis starts with a brief introduction to the basic principles and construction of an optical tweezers. Then I introduced different techniques to construct multiple optical tweezers, line optical tweezers and dynamic optical tweezers. I have applied these various optical tweezers techniques to demonstrate various optical manipulation and optical sorting of colloidal particles. In addition, I have successfully demonstrated the use of dynamic optical tweezers system to two-dimensional colloidal crystals and have yielded new insights into the physics of soft-condense matter physics.