Resonator nanophotonic standing-wave array trap for single-molecule manipulation and measurement

Fan Ye, James T. Inman, Yifeng Hong, Porter M. Hall and Michelle D. Wang ()
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Fan Ye: Howard Hughes Medical Institute
James T. Inman: Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Yifeng Hong: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Porter M. Hall: Biophysics Program
Michelle D. Wang: Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Nature Communications, 2022, vol. 13, issue 1, 1-10

Abstract: Abstract Nanophotonic tweezers represent emerging platforms with significant potential for parallel manipulation and measurements of single biological molecules on-chip. However, trapping force generation represents a substantial obstacle for their broader utility. Here, we present a resonator nanophotonic standing-wave array trap (resonator-nSWAT) that demonstrates significant force enhancement. This platform integrates a critically-coupled resonator design to the nSWAT and incorporates a novel trap reset scheme. The nSWAT can now perform standard single-molecule experiments, including stretching DNA molecules to measure their force-extension relations, unzipping DNA molecules, and disrupting and mapping protein-DNA interactions. These experiments have realized trapping forces on the order of 20 pN while demonstrating base-pair resolution with measurements performed on multiple molecules in parallel. Thus, the resonator-nSWAT platform now meets the benchmarks of a table-top precision optical trapping instrument in terms of force generation and resolution. This represents the first demonstration of a nanophotonic platform for such single-molecule experiments.

Date: 2022
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-27709-3

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