Optical manipulation of microtubules for directed biomolecule assembly

Abstract

Optical trapping provides the ability to directly manipulate nano-objects in synthetic environment and hold the potential to produce the next generation of nanodevices. We report a computer-controlled strategy based on dynamic holographic optical trapping to efficiently capture and optically manipulate individual microtubules (25 nm in diameter and several µm in length) as well as hybrid complexes formed from microtubules and quantum dots, with nanometer spatial resolution (15 nm), in three dimensions (over distances exceeding 50 µm in the x–y plane and 10 µm in the z direction), in stationary flow and on engineered surfaces. We also show that individual hybrid complexes can be captured and manipulated for the assembly of user-directed architectures. This strategy can be used for the automated nanofabrication of complex macromolecular architectures and development of novel hybrid materials.