Single cell manipulation in cell culture media with Self-Locking Optoelectronic Tweezers across a large area

We report a novel Self-Locking Optoelectronic Tweezers (SLOT) for single-cell manipulation in cell culture media across a large area. SLOT overcomes two major technical barriers of conventional optoelectronic tweezers (OET) toward high throughput single-cell manipulation. Its unique lateral, ring-shaped phototransistor design enables manipulation in high conductivity media (1 S/m) and overcomes a fundamental blurry optical pattern issue for single-cell manipulation in large area (> 1 cm
²
).