Design and Construction of a Comp act and Portable Optical Tweezers

Abstract

The design and construction of an installation of optical tweezers is presented. It consists of a Nd: YAG laser, which works in the second harmonic (532 nm), a telescope, a webcam, a microscope and a motion control card designed on the basis of a programmable microcontroller PIC16F877A and that answers to commands from a personal computer using the serial protocol RS-232. Using a graphical programming called Labview 8.0 were designed virtual instruments that control the acquisition of video from the Webcam and the motion control card. The quality of the laser beam at the end of optical system was characterized using the knife-edge method, resulting in a Gaussian shaped (TEM00) intensity profile. The feasibility of constructing a compact installation of optical tweezers, simplified, portable and a low cost is demonstrated.