Novel Tweezers for Biological Cells Using Piezoelectric Polylactic Acid Fibers

Abstract We fabricated poly-L-lactic acid (PLLA) fiber samples using high-speed spinning in order to improve their piezoelectricity. If an electric field is applied to the PLLA fiber in the direction perpendicular to its fiber axis, the PLLA fiber must be driven by the piezoelectric effect. We developed an effective method of applying an electric field to the PLLA fiber. As a result, we could drive the PLLA fiber by the shear piezoelectric effect under the application of ac voltage, and observed the bending motion of the entire PLLA fiber. Next, we have designed tweezers using a pair of PLLA fibers controlled by applied ac voltage, and have pursued the realization of PLLA fiber tweezers; finally, this was achived. On the basis of our experimental results, we believe that there is a high possibility of realizing the PLLA fiber tweezers for the manipulation of soft and minute samples such as biological cells.