This paper presents a multi-particle parallel manipulation optoelectronic tweezers system integrated with computer vision technology, enabling the parallel and precise manipulation of dozens of particles. This system significantly enhances manipulation efficiency while maintaining high precision. By real-time monitoring of particle motion and light patterns, the system can rapidly adjust and optimize its manipulation strategy, thereby improving the stability and reliability of multi-particle synchronization in complex environments. Extensive experimental results demonstrate the system’s outstanding performance. For instance, it can quickly arrange complex patterns and letter sequences, facilitate the coordinated assembly of organoids from particle groups, and efficiently perform the precise separation and arrangement of mixed particles. The core advantage of this system lies in its high parallelism and flexibility, enabling it to handle large-scale synchronous manipulation tasks with exceptional operating accuracy. With continuous technological advancements and the broadening of application scenarios, this system is expected to have a profound impact in fields such as cell sorting, micro-device assembly, and organoid construction, providing robust support for research and technological development in these areas.

Microfluidic technology is currently a popular approach in the field of single-cell research, which is used to reveal the heterogeneity among cells. However, most of the existing microfluidic technologies for single-cell research lack the ability to control the microenvironment of single cells after isolating them. In this work, a technology that combines lateral-field optoelectronic tweezers (LOET) with electrowetting-on-dielectric (EWOD) is used to separate cells into single cells and then encapsulate each single cell within an individual droplet, generating single-cell droplets. More importantly, it also enables the control of the microenvironment of the separated single cells. The driving control of the single - cell droplets is achieved through the EWOD, which has good application prospects in the field of single- cell research.

Optoelectronic tweezers (OET) has shown great promise in various applications, especially in the precise manipulation of microparticles and microorganisms on a micron and nanometer scale. This technology significantly enhances the efficiency of single-cell sorting and the development of antibody-based drugs. However, conventional OET platforms are limited by issues such as low autofocusing accuracy, restricted imaging field of view, and uneven illumination. To overcome these limitations, we have innovatively developed a dynamic adaptive imaging system. By incorporating peak-finding and in situ Gaussian blur compensation algorithms, we achieved rapid automatic focusing and illumination shadow compensation across an expanded field of view. At the same time, the system can also dynamically adjust compensation parameters under different lighting conditions. Our system has successfully completed comprehensive scanning of the optoelectronic tweezers chip, achieving a 60% reduction in autofocus time and a 15.8% improvement in lighting uniformity. Moreover, this imaging system demonstrates robust versatility and can serve as a reference for other optical systems.

This work presents a novel electrical method, implemented in the form of a microfluidic device, for cell arraying and target cell lysis. The microfluidic device contains a micro-well array on the photoconductive layer based on the optoelectronic tweezers (OET) method, where parallel cell manipulation is performed. As cell suspension flows over the micro-wells, cells can be actively captured in the micro-wells by light-induced dielectrophoresis (DEP) forces, form the designed pattern array in less than 120 s. The single-cell capture rate is over 83 % in the patterned cell array, and about 94% of micro-wells are occupied by cells. Then, the target cell in the specific micro-well is illuminated and lysed by electroporation in 5 seconds. The micro-well barriers and DEP forces block the influence of the flow, and a relatively closed space is critical to preserve the cell lysates. Through experiments, light-induced DEP force cell capture and target cell electroporation can be modulated by changing the light patterns and the applied signal. This device, based on the OET and dynamic electroporation, allows the rapidity in the cell capture and target lysis at the single-cell level and can enable single-cell-based studies, such as molecular diagnostics and disease detection.

The untethered microrobots driven by multiple external physics fields have promising ability in minimally invasive disease treatments. One common type of the driving fields is gradient magnetic field, which can provide microrobots with adequate driving force in complicated environment. In this study, a control method of microrobot through gradient magnetic field system is presented, which is realized by moving the field free point (FFP) to produce an alterable magnetic driving force. A confirmatory experiment of the robot reciprocating motion control is undertaken in a 1D gradient magnetic robot system. The control method could be applied to further studies on in vivo applications of targeted microrobot drug delivery system.

Non-contact manipulation technology has extensive application in the manipulation and fabrication of micro/nanomaterials. However, the manipulation devices are often precise and complex, operated only by professionals and subject to site constraints. We propose a simple optoelectronic tweezer platform, which can be controlled remotely and simply for the manipulation of microparticles at different scales, based on the novel manipulation technique called optically-induced dielectrophoresis. In this work, we design and set up the optoelectronic tweezer manipulation platform and develop the full-function human-computer interactive control interface and graphics rendering system to simplify the micro-operation process. Using Qt5.0 development environment, an experimental image processing system with multi-thread characteristics is developed, and the information interaction requirements needed in the experimental operation of optoelectronic tweezers are integrated into a control system to achieve unified information management and data analysis. Combined with cloud computing technology, the system realizes local/remote synchronous linkage operation, with cross-platform operation capability of various portable operating terminals like laptop and iPad.