Anhui University and USTC publish Nature paper on 3D fiber optic micro-tweezers with output force over 100,000 times that of traditional optical tweezers

Pan Deng, a young faculty member at the Key Laboratory of Photoelectric Information Acquisition and Protection Technology of Anhui University, in collaboration with a team from the University of Science and Technology of China, has proposed a femtosecond laser composite manufacturing method for fiber-based integrated devices. They constructed a three-dimensional fiber micro-tweezer on the end of a commercial optical fiber. The research findings were recently published in Nature. The research team integrated light transmission, photothermal conversion, soft material response, and rigid microstructure mechanical output onto the same fiber tip: light-induced material deformation, constrained by the microstructure, is transformed into controllable motion, achieving effective conversion of light energy into microscale mechanical force. By adjusting the input optical power, the clamping force can be continuously controlled—essentially