Plasmonic optical tweezers can overcome the diffraction limits of conventional optical tweezers and enable the trapping of nanoscale objects. Extension of the trapping and manipulation of nanoscale objects with nanometer position precision opens up unprecedented opportunities for applications in the fields of biology, chemistry and statistical and atomic physics. Potential applications include ...

We describe an optical tweezers instrument for measuring short-ranged colloidal interactions, based on a combination of a continuous wave line optical tweezers, high speed video microscopy, and laser illumination. Our implementation can measure the separation of two nearly contacting microspheres to better than 4 nm at rates in excess of 10 kHz. A simple image analysis algorithm allows us to se...

The first examples of oxacalix[4]arenes and [1(4)]oxacyclophanes bearing 1,8-naphthyridine units are reported, and these systems function as molecular tweezers containing inner-cavity hydrogen bond acceptors.

In recent years, highly stable optical tweezers systems have enabled the characterization of the dynamics of molecular motors at very high resolution. However, the motion of many motors with angstrom-scale dynamics cannot be consistently resolved due to poor signal-to-noise ratio. Using an acousto-optic deflector to generate a "time-shared" dual-optical trap, we decreased low-frequency noise by...