Novel approach for non-invasive phase-sensitive 2D imaging of biological objects with photovoltaic trapping

Abstract

A novel non-invasive microscopy technique for imaging and sizing of folded DNA molecules with the use of photovoltaic tweezers and phase-sensitive detection is elaborated and realized. This novel method is compared with the state-of-the-art method of visualization of DNA molecules by fluorescent microscopy technique which requires the labeling of the DNA by dye molecules. The advantage of the novel method is no requirement for the incubation of DNA with a fluorescent label, as well as the simultaneous observation of the light-induced inside the crystal refractive lattice (i.e. photovoltaic field configuration) and the trapped micro-objects by the phase-contrast method. The suggested novel method provides the accurate measurement of the size and shape of the folded DNA molecules as well as the determination of the charged or neutral nature of the trapped bio-objects by their disposition relative to the lattice fringes. We demonstrate that the labeling of DNA causes an overestimation of the molecular size. The method can be extended to the other bio-objects. The high-performance photovoltaic tweezers operating in an autonomous regime as lab-on-a-chip devices are promising for applications in integrated optics, microscopy, micro- and nanoelectronics, and biotechnology.