Development of a two-photon polymerization and optical tweezers microscope for fabrication and manipulation of microstructures

We report development of a two-photon polymerization (TPP) microscope, for micro-fabrication of microstructures, which is capable of optical manipulation by use of optical tweezers. The system is based on an inverted Nikon microscope with a tunable Ti: Sapphire femto-second (fs) laser coupled to the upper back port. While in modelocked condition, nanoparticles and wires were fabricated in photo-polymerizable synthetic materials using TPP. By axial positioning of the focused TPP laser beam, 1D-structures (for use as wave guide) were fabricated at desired height above the surface of the substrate. In the mode lock-OFF condition the same tunable laser microbeam was employed as optical tweezers to the hold the nanostructures and manipulate them even in highly viscous medium before immobilizing. Size of the TPP induced structure was found to depend on the fs laser intensity and exposure. Further, by shaping the fs laser beam to line pattern, linear 1D structures could be fabricated without scanning the beam or stage, which remain aligned along the line intensity profile due to anisotropic trapping force of the line tweezers in X and Y-directions. Use of optical tweezers with two-photon polymerization not only allowed in-situ corrective positioning of the polymerized structures, but also the integration of fluorescent microspheres (resonator/detector) with polymerized waveguide.