Simultaneous Detection of Biomolecular Interactions and Surface Topography Using Photonic Force Microscopy

Photonic force microscopy (PFM) is an optical tweezers-based scanning probe microscopy, which measures the forces in the range of fN to pN. The low stiffness leads proper to measure single molecular interaction. We introduce a novel photonic force microscopy to stably map various chemical properties as well as topographic information, utilizing weak molecular bond between probe and object's surface. First, we installed stable optical tweezers instrument, where an IR laser with 1064 nm wavelength was used as trapping source to reduce damage to biological sample. To manipulate trapped material, electric driven two-axis mirrors were used for x, y directional probe scanning and a piezo stage for z directional probe scanning. For resolution test, probe scans with vertical direction repeatedly at the same lateral position, where the vertical resolution is ~25 nm. To obtain the topography of surface which is etched glass, trapped bead scans 3-dimensionally and measures the contact position in each cycle. To acquire the chemical mapping, we design the DNA oligonucleotide pairs combining as a zipping structure, where one is attached at the surface of bead and other is arranged on surface. We measured the rupture force of molecular bonding to investigate chemical properties on the surface with various loading rate. We expect this system can realize a high-resolution multi-functional imaging technique able to acquire topographic map of objects and to distinguish difference of chemical properties between these objects simultaneously.