Thesis presented October 25, 2006

Abstract:
The trapping and the manipulation of objects on the surface of a waveguide is an interesting approach, which makes it possible to consider new developments in the field of the integrated microsystems. But the development of such devices, was until now limited by weak performances of trapping and propulsion but also by difficulties of understanding and controlling the physical phenomena in an experiment. These technological and e​xperimental keypoints had prevented the demonstration of the manipulation of biological objects, like cells, on these structures. The use of optical waveguides created by different technologies thus allowed us to judge in experiments the forces and weaknesses of each technology and to determine the best conditions for a biological experiment. In particular, the use of silicon nitride guides allowed a significant improvement of the performances of trapping and manipulation of particles on these structures.
This has thus allowed us to develop an optical propulsion demonstrator and to apply this technology with objects of higher mass or size than previously reported and in other scientific fields, like chemistry or biology. We carried out the first experimental demonstration to our knowledge of the propulsion of biological objects by evanescent waves. In particular, we carried out experiments of cellular sorting of subpopulations in a mixture. This shows the capacity to carry out, on a small surface, simple biological experiments thanks to such devices and reinforces the hope of using such a technique in a lab-on-chip approach.

Keywords:
Microsystem, waveguides, optical handling, trapping, routing, cell sorting, cell manipulation

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