Dynamic and programmable cell-sorting by using microfluidics and holographic optical tweezers

Cell sorting is important in quantitative analysis for cellular and molecular biology study. For this purpose, we develop an opto-electro-mechanical sorting system which integrates a holographic optical tweezers (HOT) system to a microfluidics device. This system is designed to manipulate and sort various micro objects of different sizes by an optical pattern which is dynamic and programmable. In this work, we fabricate a microchannel with a main channel and two branches with polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) which is a biocompatible elastomer material by utilizing semiconductor micro-fabrication techniques. By using a HOT system, we also generate two linear optical traps for the manipulation of micro particles. As a result, we have demonstrated that the larger particles are guided to the second branch by the two linear optical traps while the smaller particles remain unaffected and flow into the first branch of the microchannel.