Single cell manipulation by using tilt controlled optical tweezers

Abstract

This paper presents and discusses method of tilt controlled optical tweezers. The method can control the orientation of an anisotropic object such as a living cell, sub-mum-thick fiber and mum-sized silica bar. Since the tilt control method can be easily added to a conventional optical tweezers system by use of a single focused laser beam with a single-mirror control, this method would be applicable to full optical manipulation of single cells and to building block of nanometer-sized wires.