VALENCIA, 2 Nov. (EUROPA PRESS) –
A team from the Universitat Politècnica de València and the Universitat de València has designed “innovative” optical tweezers to capture and manipulate micro-objects. This is an initiative with “enormous potential in fields such as quantum computing, photonics, nanotechnology, the construction of micro machines and micro motors,” as reported by academic institutions.
Likewise, they have pointed out that this project could also help to better understand how the cells of the human body work and have pointed out that this system devised by the UPV and UV team confers “more flexibility, capacity and performance than clamp systems.” conventional optics. The results of this work have been published in the journal iScience.
The need to manipulate objects without physically interacting with them or through a force field is an idea that has captivated people for many years, the same sources highlighted in a statement.
Thus, they have commented that this has been revealed in science fiction films and series such as Star Trek or Star Wars, in which a beam of light could trap and attract spaceships.
Although the optical manipulation of large objects is currently not possible, the trapping of particles on small scales is, the UPV and UV have specified. The tool created for this is called optical tweezers and was created by Arthur Ashkin in 1986. Thanks to this initiative he won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2018.
With these optical tweezers, using a focused laser beam with the objective of a microscope, very small objects suspended in water or air can be caught and manipulated. Using this tool, scientists around the world have developed different trapping mechanisms for different applications.
One of the most recent has emerged from the laboratories of two research groups from the Polytechnic University of Valencia and the University of Valencia that have developed new components – diffractive optical elements, EOD – that provide more flexibility, capacity and performance. to the tweezers, these institutions have highlighted.
The system devised by the UPV and UV researchers allows “precise and simultaneous control” of particles in different configurations, “significantly improving manipulation.”
In conventional optical tweezer systems, the ability to trap and manipulate particles is restricted by the formation of a single optical vortex with a given topological charge. The main novelty of the work developed by the UPV and UV team lies in the ability to generate multiple concentric vortex beams with independent topological charges, which allows each vortex to move autonomously and in independent directions around the optical axis. have been specified by the same sources.
“We have designed a multiplexed phase mask capable of forming two vortices with different topological charges, which further expands the manipulation possibilities. Our EODs allow the generation of multiple concentric vortices and promise greater control and versatility in the micro manipulation of particles in trajectories circular”, said Vicente Ferrando, researcher at the Center for Physical Technologies (CTF) of the Polytechnic University of Valencia.
“Vortex optics have come a long way since the 1980s and have been key in fields such as communication and biotechnology. The multiplexed phase mask is a highly relevant milestone in this field, which will contribute to increasing flexibility and the capacity of optical tweezer systems,” added Walter D. Furlan, researcher at the Department of Optics and Optometry and Vision Sciences at the University of Valencia.
The innovation achieved by the UPV and UV team has “enormous potential” in fields such as quantum computing, photonics, nanotechnology, the construction of micro machines and micro motors, in addition to being able to help better understand how they work. the cells of the human body or to create new medical technologies, among other applications, the universities have insisted.
The results of this work are part of the doctoral thesis of the UPV CTF researcher Francisco M. Muñoz-Pérez, first author of the study, who added that “although we cannot yet manipulate spaceships, this creates a new focus on the trapping and manipulation of micro-objects”.
