Optical Trap Kit
19590-D04-V15; Apr 12, 2012
Page 4
www.thorlabs.com
Part 2.
Introduction
In 2007, three researchers in the Department of Biological Engineering at MIT – Steve Wasserman,
David Appleyard, and Matthew Lang – built an optical trapping setup for use in teaching labs. Their
results were published in the American Journal of Physics [S. Wasserman, D. Appleyard, and M. Lang,
Optical Trapping for Undergraduates
, Am. J. Phys.
75
, (2007)]. Based on their design, Thorlabs has
collaborated with the aforementioned authors to design an OTKB optical trapping kit that includes all
necessary components and provides the same capabilities. Moreover, since Thorlabs‟ components are
designed to be compatible with each other, the OTKB optical trapping kit is easily modified to provide
additional functionalities as your research needs evolve. For example, adding the ability to steer / scan
the optical trap position. Alternatively, an excitation light source can be easily added by incorporating a
beam splitting cube into the beam path allowing e.g fluorescence measurements. This simple and
modular nature of the system allows you to adapt it for a wide variety of applications.
All of the components needed to construct a fully functional optical trapping system are included in this
cost effective kit (OTKB contains imperial components while OTKB/M contains their metric
counterparts). The system ships in five pre-assembled segments making it very easy to build your optical
tweezers system in a short time.
Part 3.
System Description and Segments
The OTKB(/M) system is shipped in five pre-assembled segments, which makes it very easy to build
your optical tweezers system in a relatively short time. There is the collimator segment, the beam
expander segment, the vertical segment, the stage assembly and the camera segment. All that is needed
is mostly coupling these segments together and final laser alignment. These four segments will be
described below, including photos.
3.1
The Collimator Segment:
This includes mainly the fiberport which has been pre-adjusted for collimation at 975nm wavelength.
First check the collimation and alignment by referring to
Section 6.1
,
steps 3) and 4
) and if more
adjustments need to be done, follow
step 5)
too. Once you are satisfied with the collimation and
alignment to the center, this segment connects to the four ER1 rods on the KCB1 of the Beam Expander
Segment.
Summary of Contents for OTKB
Page 1: ...Optical Trap Kit Manual...
