Managing hierarchical supramolecular organization with holographic tweezers

A study was conducted to demonstrate the management of hierarchical supramolecular organization with holographic tweezers (HOT). It was demonstrated that optical tweezers were ideal tools for a moderate number of particles, including trapping, orienting, and guiding particles, specifically when HOTs were implemented. It was also demonstrated that it was possible to achieve a high degree of control on elongated microscopic objects, such as rod-shaped bacteria by means of tailored light fields in HOT. Any single host in an assembly was controlled independently from all others, solely by optical means and in strong contrast to the existing ensemble-based methods with HOT. It was also demonstrated that the hierarchical supramolecular organization achieved by the approach was not limited to static assemblies.