en.Wedoany.com Reported - Pan Deng, a young faculty member at the National Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Information Acquisition and Protection Technology at 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 successfully constructed a three-dimensional fiber optic micro-tweezer on the end of a commercial optical fiber, achieving high-precision, low-damage, and programmable three-dimensional manipulation of micrometer-scale targets. The research findings were published in June 2026 in the international academic journal Nature.
Precision manipulation at the micro- and nanoscale is a key frontier in fields such as optoelectronic information technology, advanced manufacturing, and biomedicine. Existing micro-manipulation technologies have long faced a bottleneck in balancing manipulation precision, output force, device size, and system integration. To address this challenge, the research team proposed a design strategy for multi-material composite microsystems at the fiber tip. Leveraging femtosecond laser high-precision micro-nano processing technology, they integrated light transmission, photothermal conversion, soft material response, and rigid microstructure mechanical output onto the same fiber tip, constructing a novel three-dimensional fiber optic micro-tweezer.
According to the research team, the output force of this three-dimensional fiber optic micro-tweezer is more than 100,000 times that of traditional optical tweezers, enabling precise manipulation of micrometer-scale targets and accurate assembly of complex microstructures. Traditional optical tweezers use light radiation pressure to trap particles, with output forces typically on the order of piconewtons (pN). In contrast, this new micro-tweezer achieves an order-of-magnitude increase in manipulation force through the synergistic effect of photothermal conversion and microstructure mechanical output. Additionally, the micro-tweezer acts like a "miniature dexterous hand" at the cellular scale, capable of precise manipulation of microscopic objects such as single cells and performing micro-scale sampling in confined spaces of hundreds of micrometers.
The National Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Information Acquisition and Protection Technology at Anhui University is a national-level research platform approved by the Ministry of Science and Technology, focusing on cutting-edge fields such as optoelectronic information acquisition, protection technology, and micro-nano photonic devices. Femtosecond laser processing technology utilizes the interaction of extremely short pulses (on the order of 10⁻¹⁵ seconds) with materials, offering advantages such as a small heat-affected zone, high processing precision, and applicability to various materials. It is one of the key technological means for achieving micro-nano scale precision manufacturing.
Researchers stated that this achievement expands the role of optical fibers from traditional carriers of optical information and energy to an integrated platform for optically controlled micro-nano manipulation. This technology holds potential applications in fields such as life sciences, minimally invasive medicine, and advanced manufacturing, providing a new technical solution for micro-nano precision manipulation. The successful construction of the three-dimensional fiber optic micro-tweezer marks significant progress for China in the field of micro-nano manipulation technology and opens new directions for the development of fiber-integrated devices.
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