Abstract

Recently, the use of vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) as light sources for optical particle trapping and manipulation has gained increasing interest, owing to high beam quality, low cost and the possibility to fabricate two-dimensional, monolithic laser arrays (see Refs, in [1]). Also, typical emission wavelengths are in the near infrared spectral region, which is important for damage-free manipulation of biological material. However, mainly standard VCSEL arrays designed for data communication have been applied so far, which show a large pitch of typically 250 μm and necessitate the use of additional microlens arrays. Furthermore, for a drastic miniaturization of the trapping setup towards the so-called integrated optical trap, the typical multimode output beam profile of VCSELs is inappropriate [1].

© 2007 IEEE