Fabrication and application of a non-contact double-tapered optical fiber tweezers

In this method, the second taper angle (STA) of DOFTs can be controlled easily by the interfacial layer etching time. Application of the DOFTs to the optical trapping of the yeast cells was presented.

Effects of the STA on the axile trapping efficiency and the trapping position were investigated experimentally and theoretically. The experimental results are good agreement with the theoretical ones. The results demonstrated that the non-contact capture can be realized for the large STA (e.g. 90 deg) and there was an optimal axile trapping efficiency as the STA increasing.