Holographic optical tweezers: microassembling of shape-complementary 2PP building blocks

Based on an ongoing trend in miniaturization and due to the increased complexity in MEMS-technology new methods of assembly need to be developed. Recent developments show that particularly optical forces are suitable to meet the requirements. The unique advantages of optical tweezers (OT) are attractive due to their contactless and precise manipulation forces. Spherical as well as non-spherical shaped pre-forms can already be assembled arbitrarily by using appropriate beam profiles generated by a spatial light modulator (SLM), resulting in a so called holographic optical tweezer (HOT) setup. For the fabrication of shape-complementary pre-forms, a two-photon-polymerization (2PP) process is implemented. The purpose of the process combination of 2PP and HOT is the development of an optical microprocessing platform for assembling arbitrary building blocks. Here, the optimization of the 2PP and HOT processes is described in order to allow the fabrication and 3D assembling of interlocking components. Results include the analysis of the dependence of low and high qualities of 2PP microstructures and their manufacturing accuracy for further HOT assembling processes. Besides, the applied detachable interlocking connections of the 2PP building blocks are visualized by an application example. In the long-term a full optical assembly method without applying any mechanical forces can thus be realized.