Development of a joystick-controlled optically-induced dielectrophoresis platform for real-time micromanipulation

Global efforts have been made in the past two decades to efficiently manipulate and assemble tiny entities at micro-scale or even nano-scale. In this paper, we discuss our team´s development of adding an interactive controller to the emerging optically-induced dielectrophoresis (ODEP) platform which could be used to rapidly and parallelly manipulate micro and nano particles in fluidic medium. We have demonstrated that, with a real-time control interface via a joystick, users can intuitively use the platform to selectively trap and move a single 10um polystyrene micro-bead easily and move it at a maximum velocity of 347itm/s. The frequency spectrum, force and velocity in manipulating micro-beads are investigated to characterize this controller-integrated ODEP system. Through experimental investigation, we have verified that the smoothness of the light motion brings a limit to the speed in manipulating micro entities in a static fluidic medium. It is further shown that there is a possibility to increase the maximum manipulation speed by enhancing both the software and hardware refresh rates for the animated light image projected in an ODEP chip.