Related papers: Manipulation of a Micro-object Using Topological H…

Numerous cell-types have shown a remarkable ability to detect and move along gradients in stiffness of an underlying substrate -- a process known as durotaxis. The mechanisms underlying durotaxis are still unresolved, but generally believed…

Optical tweezers, formed by tightly focused propagating laser beams, offer the unique capability to trap and control microscopic particles over a broad size range. However, the diffraction inherent to propagating optical fields, limits the…

Optical tweezers, the three-dimensional confinement of a nanoparticle by a strongly focused beam of light, have been widely employed in investigating biomaterial nanomechanics, nanoscopic fluid properties, and ultrasensitive detections in…

The design of strategies to generate efficient mixing is crucial for a variety of applications, particularly digital microfluidic devices that use small "discrete" fluid volumes (droplets) as fluid carriers and microreactors. In recent…

Light and sound waves have the fascinating property that they can move objects through the transfer of linear or angular momentum. This ability has led to the development of optical and acoustic tweezers, with applications ranging from…

Magnetotaxis is a well known phenomenon in swimming microorganisms which sense magnetic fields e.g. by incorporating crystalline magnetosomes. In designing artificial active matter with tunable dynamics, external magnetic fields can provide…

Optical tweezers have become a powerful tool for measuring parameters of microscale and nanoscale local environments. Motion of particles within optical tweezer traps established itself as a probe for local viscosity, temperature as well as…

It is known that obstacles can hydrodynamically trap bacteria and synthetic microswimmers in orbits, where the trapping time heavily depends on the swimmer flow field and noise is needed to escape the trap. Here, we use experiments and…

This paper considers the interaction between two droplets placed on a substrate in immediate vicinity. We show here that when the two droplets are of different fluids and especially when one of the droplet is highly volatile, a wealth of…

Three-dimensional harmless contactless manipulation and assembly of micro-objects and micro-organisms would open new horizons in microrobotics and microbiology, e.g. for microsystems assembly or tissue engineering. In our previous work…

Optical tweezers use laser light to trap and move microscopic particles in space. Here we demonstrate a similar control over ultrashort light pulses, but in time. Our experiment involves temporal cavity solitons that are stored in a passive…

This paper presents a robotic in-hand manipulation technique that can be applied to pick an object too large to grasp in a prehensile manner, by taking advantage of its contact interactions with a curved, passive end-effector, and two flat…

Cloaking is a method of making obstacles undetectable. Here we cloak unit cells of a magnetic pattern squeezed into an otherwise periodic pattern from a magnetically driven colloidal flow. We apply a time-periodic external magnetic field…

The concept of a single-beam acoustical tweezer device which can simultaneously trap microparticles at different points is proposed and demonstrated through computational simulations. The device employs an ultrasound beam produced by a…

Micro droplets are extensively used in chemical, biological, and medical research, primarily for conducting various tests on samples, including living organisms, using a microfluidic framework. Recent studies have shown that the physiology…

Optomechanical manipulation of micro and nano-scale objects with laser beams finds use in a large span of multidisciplinary applications. Auxiliary nanostructuring could substantially improve performances of classical optical tweezers by…

Single-particle tracking and optical tweezers are powerful techniques for studying diverse processes at the microscopic scale. The stochastic behavior of a microscopically observable particle contains information about its interaction with…

Optoelectronic tweezer-driven microrobots (OETdMs) are a versatile micromanipulation technology based on the use of light induced dielectrophoresis to move small dielectric structures (microrobots) across a photoconductive substrate. The…

Advances in optical trapping design principles have led to tremendous progress in manipulating nanoparticles (NPs) with diverse functionalities in different environments using bulky systems. However, efficient control and manipulation of…

This paper presents a microfluidic device that implements standing surface acoustic waves in order to handle single cells, droplets, and generally particles. The particles are moved in a very controlled manner by the two-dimensional…