Scientists have developed a new way to trap small particles with light. Building on the Nobel Prize winning technique of optical tweezers (Arthur Ashkin, 2018), a team of physicists, led by Dr. David Phillips at the University of Exeter, has advanced the possibilities of optical trapping.
The research paper, published in the journal Science Advances, is titled “Photon-efficient optical tweezers via wavefront shaping.”
Conventional optical tweezers, developed in the 1980s, are a tightly focused laser beam which can attract and trap certain micro-sized particles or organisms, akin to grabbing something with a pair of tweezers.
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