Abstract:

Optical tweezers is a popular contact-free force-transduction method for manipulating microscopic objects with high precision. Generating forces on the piconewton scales, it is used widely in the field of biophysics to study everything from cellular mechanics to single macromolecular interactions. Combining different nanotechnologies with optical tweezers provides a potential route for incorporating additional sensing capabilities that can target and report locally on specific types of physical, biological, and chemical properties. Bright fluorescent nanodiamonds containing many nitrogen-vacancy lattice defects are among the most promising candidates for such applications, as they possess both desirable trapping properties and optoelectronic properties that are amenable to a range of different sensing modalities. In this presentation, I’ll share our recent progress in combining optical tweezers with nitrogen-vacancy based optical magnetic resonance sensing. I will also discuss how modes of optical manipulation and nanostructure shape can be used to provide additional capabilities for optically detected magnetic resonance and spin-relaxometry based sensing.

Bio:

Peter J. Reece is an Associate Professor in the School of Physics at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. His research group works on developing novel microscopy and spectroscopy techniques for applications in biophotonics, optoelectronics, and optical sensing.