Eur. Phys. J. B 46, 1-8 (2005)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2005-00232-2

Position control and optical manipulation for nanotechnology applications

¹ LENS, Via Nello Carrara 1, 50019 Sesto Fiorentino, Firenze, Italy and Dipartimento di Biologia Animale e Genetica “Leo Pardi”, Via Romana 17/19 50125 Firenze, Italy
² LENS, Via Nello Carrara 1, 50019 Sesto Fiorentino, Firenze, Italy and Dipartimento di Fisica-Università degli Studi di Firenze, Via Giovanni Sansone 1, 50019 Sesto Fiorentino, Firenze, Italy

Corresponding author: ^a pavone@lens.unifi.it

Received: 8 September 2004
Revised: 6 April 2005
Published online: 8 August 2005

Abstract

During the last decade, great advances have been made concerning the construction and manipulation of nanostructures. As a consequence, nanometer stability and control of the sample position have became crucial points. For this purpose, we have built an optical microscope with high mechanic stability and we have implemented a feedback system in order to compensate thermal drifts. We demonstrate the system stability to be within one nanometer, with a control on the sample position of some micrometers, along the three spatial directions. The sample can be manipulated optically by means of a multiple optical tweezers setup and its displacements measured with a 3D position detector. We discuss and characterize the system properties thoroughly. We finally test the apparatus on a bio-molecular system constituted by a single myosin motor interacting with an actin filament.