{"id":113102,"date":"2020-09-16T16:55:42","date_gmt":"2020-09-16T23:55:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/09\/light-based-tractor-beam-assembles-materials-at-the-nanoscale"},"modified":"2020-09-16T16:55:42","modified_gmt":"2020-09-16T23:55:42","slug":"light-based-tractor-beam-assembles-materials-at-the-nanoscale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/09\/light-based-tractor-beam-assembles-materials-at-the-nanoscale","title":{"rendered":"Light-based \u2018tractor beam\u2019 assembles materials at the nanoscale"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/light-based-tractor-beam-assembles-materials-at-the-nanoscale5.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Modern construction is a precision endeavor. Builders must use components manufactured to meet specific standards \u2014 such as beams of a desired composition or rivets of a specific size. The building industry relies on manufacturers to create these components reliably and reproducibly in order to construct secure bridges and sound skyscrapers.<\/p>\n<p>Now imagine construction at a smaller scale \u2014 less than 1\/100th the thickness of a piece of paper. This is the nanoscale. It is the scale at which scientists are working to develop potentially groundbreaking technologies in fields like <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Quantum_computing\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">quantum computing<\/a>. It is also a scale where traditional fabrication methods simply will not work. Our standard tools, even miniaturized, are too bulky and too corrosive to reproducibly manufacture components at the nanoscale.<\/p>\n<p>Researchers at the University of Washington have developed a method that could make reproducible manufacturing at the nanoscale possible. The team adapted a light-based technology employed widely in biology \u2014 known as optical traps or <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Optical_tweezers\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">optical tweezers<\/a> \u2014 to operate in a water-free liquid environment of carbon-rich organic solvents, thereby enabling new potential applications.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Modern construction is a precision endeavor. Builders must use components manufactured to meet specific standards \u2014 such as beams of a desired composition or rivets of a specific size. The building industry relies on manufacturers to create these components reliably and reproducibly in order to construct secure bridges and sound skyscrapers. Now imagine construction at [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,1523,4,1617,1914],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-113102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biological","category-computing","category-nanotechnology","category-quantum-physics","category-tractor-beam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113102\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}