Colloquium 2008-01-31

 

3:30 p.m. in Room 307 of the Optical Sciences Meinel Building

Speaker:

Ming Wu

University of California at Berkeley

Title:

Optoelectronic Tweezers for Manipulating Cells and Nanowires

 

Host:

Stanley Pau

 

Abstract:

Optoelectronic tweezers (OET) is a new optical manipulation technique developed recently at UC Berkeley. Based on light-induced dielectrophoresis, OET can trap and sort colloidal particles and biological cells. It requires 100,000 times less optical power than conventional laser tweezers. As a result, we can use digital light projects to form massively parallel dynamic traps. As many as 31,000 individually addressable traps have been generated over an area of ~ 1 mm x 1 mm.  Recently, we have succeeded in trapping semiconductor and metallic nanowires (~ 100 nm diameter, a few micron in length). Once trapped, we can use the same optical beam to excite and measure the Raman spectra of the trapped single nanowire. Potentially, we can also use trapped nanowire as a SERS probe for in situ Raman characterization. Dynamic manipulation and sorting of biological cells using phototransistor-based OET will also be discussed.

 

Bio: Ming Wu is Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, and Co-Director of Berkeley Sensors and Actuators Center (BSAC). His research interests include MEMS, optoelectronics, and optofluidics. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from UC Berkeley in 1985 and 1988, respectively. Before joining the faculty of UC Berkeley, Dr. Wu was a Member of Technical Staff at AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, from 1988 to 1992, and Professor of Electrical Engineering at UCLA from 1993 to 2004. In 1997, Dr. Wu co-founded OMM in San Diego, CA, to commercialize MEMS optical switches. He is an IEEE Fellow, a Packard Fellow (1992-7). He was recently awarded  the 2007 Engineering Excellence Award from the Optical Society of America. He has published over 440 technical papers, and holds 16 patents.