School of Physics Colloquium: Prof. Michelle Wang, Cornell University

Optical trapping has been proven to be a powerful manipulation and measurement technique widely used in the biological and materials sciences.  A prominent example of the application of optical trapping techniques is in the study of single biological molecules, in which the mechanical behavior of a molecule can be investigated.  These techniques make it possible to disrupt protein complexes with piconewton forces and track motor proteins with nanometer and millisecond resolution.  However, conventional optical trapping instruments are only capable of manipulating one molecule at a time, which limits their throughput.  Miniaturizing optical trap instruments onto optofluidic platforms holds promise for high-throughput lab-on-a-chip applications.  We have been developing novel nanophotonic platforms for precision manipulation and measurements of a bio-molecular array.  In addition to on-chip optical trapping, we demonstrate that such a platform can be integrated with fluorescence and laminar flow cells, substantially enhancing its utility.  We anticipate that this approach will make single molecule measurements broadly available.