Processing carbon nanotubes with holographic optical tweezers (HOTs) (CAT#: STEM-MB-1310-WXH)

Name: Processing carbon nanotubes with holographic optical tweezers (HOTs)
SKU: STEM-MB-1310-WXH
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Introduction

Prized for their mechanical, chemical, electrical and optical properties, carbon nanotubes are archetypal nanotechnological building blocks. Fully realizing their promise for device and materials applications requires methods for sorting nanotubes by structure and function, for arranging them into useful and interesting configurations, and for chemically processing them once they are in place. This need is particularly pressing if nanotubes are to be integrated into heterostructures whose other components are incompatible with available lithographic techniques.

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Principle Applications Procedure Materials

Principle

Optical tweezers (originally called single-beam gradient force trap) are scientific instruments that use a highly focused laser beam to hold and move microscopic and sub-microscopic objects like atoms, nanoparticles and droplets, in a manner similar to tweezers. If the object is held in air or vacuum without additional support, it can be called optical levitation.
The laser light provides an attractive or repulsive force (typically on the order of piconewtons), depending on the relative refractive index between particle and surrounding medium. Levitation is possible if the force of the light counters the force of gravity. The trapped particles are usually micron-sized, or even smaller. Dielectric and absorbing particles can be trapped, too.

Applications

• Optical tweezers are used in biology and medicine (for example to grab and hold a single bacterium, a cell like a sperm cell or a blood cell, or a molecule like DNA).
• Nanoengineering and nanochemistry (to study and build materials from single molecules).
• Quantum optics and quantum optomechanics (to study the interaction of single particles with light).