Colloidal transport through optical tweezer arrays

Phys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys. 2007 Jan;75(1 Pt 1):011407. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.75.011407. Epub 2007 Jan 18.

Abstract

Viscously damped particles driven past an evenly spaced array of potential energy wells or barriers may become kinetically locked in to the array, or else may escape from the array. The transition between locked-in and free-running states has been predicted to depend sensitively on the ratio between the particles' size and the separation between wells. This prediction is confirmed by measurements on monodisperse colloidal spheres driven through arrays of holographic optical traps.