Optics with a delicate touch

Issued: Tue, 02 Nov 2010 10:16:00 GMT

(November 2010)  Miles Padgett and the optical tweezers team, working with their collaborators in Bristol have just been awarded a major new EPSRC grant under their life science initiative.  The application is to develop a new kind of microscopic probe which uses light beams to pick up and hold a microscopic stylus.  The stylus will be scanned over the surface of the object, like an old fashioned record player, to feel and map the surface of biological objects like individual cells and bacteria. 

The technique promises to be 1000 times more sensitive than the existing atomic force microscopes.