We propose using “iLabs,” which relies on the digitalization of an experiment and a virtual display with photographs, as a solution to overcome the lack of scalability of realistic online experimentation and facilitate educational conversations.
KEYWORDS: Particles, Electrodes, Dielectrophoresis, Chemical analysis, Near field, Polarization, Optical tweezers, Near field optics, Laser engraving, Plasmonics
Trapping and manipulation of micro and nanoparticles are essential functional elements of lab-on-a-chip and micro total analysis systems with applications ranging from single cell analysis, diagnostics, drug discovery, and chemical synthesis. Reliable optical trapping of subwavelength particles is difficult due to the diffraction limited gradient of the optical intensity. Near-field traps have emerged as excellent systems to overcome this bottleneck. Using a periodic arrangement of C-shaped apertures we demonstrate the on-chip manipulation of single sub-wavelength polystyrene beads. The wavelength and polarization sensitivity of these resonant nanostructures is exploited to expose the trapped bead to a time varying near-field force using wavelength and polarization multiplexing schemes. While optical trapping has the advantage of being contactless, dielectrophoresis provides higher forces due to the flexibility of applying larger voltages and field gradients. The RF/Microwave frequency regime where dielectrophoresis operates allows increased polarizability of certain samples due to contribution from orientational, molecular and atomic polarizations as well as particle’s electrical conductivity. Combining the above advantages of both the techniques we discuss photoinduced dielectrophoretic trapping and manipulation of nanoparticles. Using dielectrophoretic trapping we discuss the simultaneous manipulation of beads and droplets as a route for on chip chemical synthesis.
An achromatic objective lens with the object-space numerical aperture (NA) of 0.7 is designed for endomicroscopy applications for in vivo diagnosis of cancer. For these applications, it is required that the size of the optical components be no more than the diameter of a biopsy needle. The challenges associated with designing such an optical system are discussed. The clear aperture size for the lens is set to 1.5 mm. The lens is achromatic for the wavelength range from 452 to 623 nm. The system was designed and optimized using CODE V optical design software. The performance of the design is analyzed and found to be within the design requirements. Tolerance analysis is also performed to check the robustness of the design.
Taguchi’s method is introduced to perform multiobjective optimization of fiber Raman amplifier (FRA). The optimization requirements are to maximize gain and keep gain ripple minimum over the operating bandwidth of a wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) communication link. Mathematical formulations of FRA and corresponding numerical solution techniques are discussed. A general description of Taguchi’s method and how it can be integrated with the FRA optimization problem are presented. The proposed method is used to optimize two different configurations of FRA. The performance of Taguchi’s method is compared with genetic algorithm and particle swarm optimization in terms of output performance and convergence rate. Taguchi’s method is found to produce good results with fast convergence rate, which makes it well suited for the nonlinear optimization problems.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.