Multichannel dual-fiber optical traps on chip

Building on conventional dual-fiber optical trap systems, we have developed a multichannel dual-fiber optical trap chip that is simple and low-cost. This chip features three channels, enabling simultaneous capture of three individual microspheres within a liquid environment. With each microsphere being captured by opposing optical fibers at 45-mW power, the measured axial optical trap stiffnesses of each channel were 0.4626, 0.7184, and 0.6467 pN/μm, respectively, whereas the transverse optical trap stiffnesses were 1.7794, 1.6885, and 1.4560 pN/μm. This chip may have various applications in the field of microfluidics, such as optical stretching, viscosity coefficient measurements, cell analysis, and micromixing.