Engineers create micron-scale optical tweezers

In 2018, one-half of the Nobel Prize was awarded to
Arthur Ashkin, the physicist who developed optical tweezers, the
use of a tightly focused laser beam to isolate and move
micron-scale objects (the size of red blood cells). Now Justus
Ndukaife, assistant professor of electrical engineering at
Vanderbilt University, has developed the first-ever
opto-thermo-electrohydrodynamic tweezers, optical nanotweezers that
can trap and manipulate objects on an even smaller
scale.