The Daily Pennsylvanian is a student-run nonprofit.

Please support us by disabling your ad blocker on our site.

By Leanne Ta

The Daily Pennsylvanian

High schools and small laboratories can now access a piece of world-class equipment they once could only dream of, thanks to graduate student Brian Edwards.

That device is a pair of tweezers. Well, sort of.

Edwards, an Electrical and Systems Engineering doctoral candidate, has created "electric tweezers" that allow researchers to manipulate microscopic particles simply by moving a joystick.

Although Edwards' research involves objects on the smallest scale, its implications are anything but tiny.

His discoveries regarding the manipulation of tiny particles will put an important scientific research tool into the hands of many who would otherwise be unable to afford such technology, he said.

While there are other devices on the market that perform similar functions, most are "very expensive - certainly not something you and I would get to play with on a rainy day," Edwards said.

With the help of Nader Engheta and Stephane Evoy - both professors in the ESE department - Edwards invented the tool, which manipulates particles using charged electrodes and costs just a fraction of the price of similar products.

Costing as little as $2,000 - a price almost unheard of for a machine of this type - the electric tweezers could be affordable to high schools and independent scientists.

"From the point of view of cost, the electric tweezers would be very competitive," said Electrical Engineering professor Jorge Santiago, who has worked closely with Edwards in the past.

The electric tweezers operate on a microscope slide embedded with electrodes. The microscope is attached to a computer, on which the researcher can select an individual particle to manipulate. Once the particle is selected, the computer calculates the voltage needed to move the particle and the particle's location. A special circuit then generates the electric field needed to move the particle.

Edwards compares the movement of the particle to "a marble rolling on a cookie sheet, or a wooden labyrinth game." Instead of tilting a plane to move a ball, however, one applies electric fields to move a particle.

Aside from being relatively low-cost, the electric tweezers offer a few other advantages. According to Materials Science and Engineering professor Ritesh Agarwal, "the electric tweezers allow for a more deterministic way of manipulating materials on a small scale."

They are also simple to operate. Since a computer makes the calculations, scientists need only to "steer on a joystick to move the particle wherever they want," Edwards said.

Edwards demonstrated this by directing the movements of a gold nanorod - a miniscule six millionths of a meter in length - to spell out the word "Penn" earlier this year.

Edwards is now looking to bring his device into the "realm of biological particles," he said.

Santiago believes that the electric tweezers will be important in the fields of electronics and electro-optics, in studying the characteristics of bio-materials and in enhancing the delivery of drugs to the body.

A preliminary patent has been filed for the electric tweezers.

"Currently, we're trying to reduce it to a size at which it has more utility," Edwards said.

Comments powered by Disqus

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.