Electric tweezers

SummaryElectric tweezers utilize DC and AC electric fields through voltages applied on patterned electrodes to manipulate nanoentities suspended in a liquid. Nanowires with a large aspect ratio are particularly suitable for use in electric tweezers for patterning, assembling, and manipulation. Despite operating in the regime of extremely small particle Reynolds number (of order 10−5), electric tweezers can manipulate nanowires with high precision to follow any prescribed trajectory, to rotate nanowires with controlled chirality, angular velocity and rotation angle, and to assemble nanowires to fabricate nanoelectromechanical system (NEMS) devices such as nanomotors and nano-oscillators. Electric tweezers have also been used to transport in a highly controlled manner drug-carrying functionalized nanowires for cell-specific drug delivery.

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• We review the use of electric tweezers as a method of manipulating nanowires in suspension.
• We discuss the physical principles associated with electric tweezers.
• We give examples of nanoscale devices that can be produced.
• We show how electric tweezers can be used for subcellular drug delivery.