Nanotechnology-Innovations in Medical Technology

New 'nanotweezers' open door to innovations in medicine, mobile tech

As a common technique, the nanotweezers are appropriate to a catholic range of metal, semiconductor, polymer and dielectric nanostructures with charged or hydrophobic surfaces. Thus far, researchers have successfully "trapped" silicon nanospheres, silica beads, polystyrene beads, silicon nanowires, germanium nanowires and metal nanostructures. The further arrangement of these nanomaterials in a rationally designed manner can lead to a better understanding of how matter organizes and potential discovery of new functional materials.

In a biological setting, Zheng believes that live cell manipulation and cell-to-cell communication will probably be a primary research focus for engineers wishing to exploit the capabilities afforded by the nanotweezers.

Optimization of the current system to make it bio-compatible is the next step of our project," Zheng said. "We expect to use our tweezers to manipulate biological cells and molecules at single-molecule resolution, to control drug release and to study the cell-cell interaction. The manipulation and analysis of biological objects will open a new door to early disease diagnosis and the discovery of nanomedicine."

This cooperation between nanophotonics, nanochemistry and nanophysics research has provided the tools to manipulate and analyze nanoparticles in ways that have, until now, been beyond our reach. The UT research team has demonstrated how, using their nanotweezers, light can be used at the nanoscale in the same way mechanical tweezers are used to handle larger samples.