Sharif Digital Repository

Ultrasound waves have been one of the passions of researchers of different fields for many years. In recent decades the potential of ultrasound waves for trapping and manipulating micro-particles has been noted by many researchers. “Acoustic Tweezers” is the name given to this application of ultrasonic devices. The advantages of this device over its optical counterpart, named “Optical Tweezers”, are its low price, ease of use, biocompatibility and its capability of being used in opaque media. In acoustic tweezers, particles can be trapped either by making standing acoustic waves, or by making highly focused narrow beams and trapping the particles in potential wells. In this research... 

Lipid bilayers are one of nature’s solutions to confine and compartmentalize molecules and microorganisms. Usually, the thickness of the membrane is very small compared to the length scale at which it is studied. Therefore it is convenient to represent it with a 2-dimensional surface that has a stretch, shear, and curvature energy. Triangulated surfaces are the most popular discretization method to study the mechanical behavior of vesicles and fluid membranes since their elastic and bending moduli can be rigorously defined. Fluid membranes pose a particular challenge because they do not have a shear modulus. The dynamic triangulation algorithm is the state-of-the-art method developed to... 

Optical tweezer is a highly focused laser beam that could be used to trap micro and nano particles in three dimensions. It could be used to measure(or apply) piconewton range forces. Most of the optical tweezers experiments have been done in liquid mediums. In last few years, trapping particles which are floating in gas mediums(called aerosols) have been considered extensively. In this thesis, the changes in trap stiffness and conversion factor due to changes in laser power, trapping depth and particle are evaluated. It is shown that changing these three parameters, cause considerable changes in trap stiffnes and conversion factor. Linear behavior of trap stiffness versus laser power,... 

Microfluidics is a field of science that studies micron-scale characteristics of fluids. In this scale fluids show fascinating behavior far beyond our expectation compared to their large-scale counterparts. One of such peculiar behavior is the mixing of two different liquids flowing inside a microchannel. Due to low Reynolds number, the flow inside such a channel would be dominated by laminar behavior. In this regime mixing of the fluids is only mediated by molecular diffusion which is a rather slow process. In the current thesis, we utilized the rotating ability of optical tweezers to construct an active micromixer for Microfluidics. In order to do this we used birefringent microbeads. The... 

Intensity or phase Modulation of a wavefront is possible by means of optical devices. Placing a grating or lens on the way of a wavefront, will alter the phase or intensity of it and this will make a diffraction pattern. Spatial Light Modulator (SLM) is an optical device which is the most important part of a video projector. One can apply grating, lens and other phases on the wavefront using this device.In this project we used SLM to modify phase of laser beam and then we made many focal points such that they could displace independently. The result of this project can be used in designing and creating a holographic optical tweezers.Moreover, A. Einstein proved that the light could be... 

Viscoelastic properties of biological fluid play an important role on biological organs. As an example we all know that Red blood cells must have high flexibility to pass thorough thin capillary.This high flexibility come partially from cytoplasm and 2 dimensional membrane and partially from polymeric fluid inside the cell(hemoglobin). So, for recognizing mechanical properties of a whole cell we also need to study the same properties just for fluid inside the cell. for this general purpose through this project we are going to measure viscoelastic properties of any polymeric fluid by optical tweezers which has an ability for measuring displacement of micron particle with accuracy of nm. first... 

Optimizing optical tweezers and achieving powerful traps has always been a challenging topic for researchers , since the trap stiffness increases with increasing laser power which may damage specimens , especially biological ones and cells . In this thesis , we introduce a special geometry and structure of particles that , have the possibility to increase the stiffness (strength) of the optical trap and cause the magnetic response of particles at optical frequencies . Special geometries such as a combination of dielectric particles with magnetic nanoparticles that emphasize the role of the laser magnetic field and lead to changes in the electrical and magnetic properties at the laser... 

Optical tweezers consist of a tightly focused laser beam. Particle with refractive index grater than that of the surrounding medium are eligible for optical trapping. This device is used for measuring forces from pico-newton to nano-newton, and displacements from nanometer to micrometer. In biopolymers, for example, it is used for studying the elasticity of DNA molecules, mechanical properties of cell membrane; and also in Microfluidics, it can is used for mixing two liquids flowing in a micro-channel by rotating a trapped particle. In general, physics of optical tweezers (or interaction of the trapped particle with the tightly focused laser beam) is treated in three different regimes:1)... 

Blood is one of the most important fluids in the human body, consisting of three parts: red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets. The mechanical properties of red blood cells are important in many diseases. The study of viscosity and other mechanical properties of red blood cells in recent years has attracted the attention of scientists in this field. The mechanical properties of red blood cells are related to the outer membrane and its cytoskeleton, and the study of these components can predict the behavior of red blood cells in diseases. The thyroid gland is located in front of the neck and secretes hormones that control many chemical processes in different parts of the body.... 

Red blood cells are one of the most important parts of blood and their mechanical properties are so important in some diseases. Red blood cell is mostly consisted of membrane, cell skeleton, and cytoplasm which contains hemoglobin proteins. Studying these properties separately not only could give us pieces of information about cell mechanics, but also reveals a way to predict their behavior after illnesses. Optical tweezers as a tool, which can produce and measure Piconewton to Nanonewton forces, has been interesting in red blood cell parts' studying. In this thesis, at first hemoglobin is taken out gradually by using Saponin (which is enable to make some pores in the membrane) and the... 

Polycarbonate (PC) is known as one of the engineering plastics with remarkable mechanical properties, but the application of this polymer is limited due to its high notch sensitivity. Blending polycarbonate with other polymers such as acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) is a method to resolve this disadvantage. PC/ABS blends are commonly used in automotive industry, electrical and electronic devices. As PC and ABS are not completely miscible, a variety of compatibilizers are used to achieve a suitable microstructure and high engineering properties. Considering crucial applications of PC/ABS blends, different flame retardants are also used to reduce the flammability. These flame retardants... 

Digital holographic microscope is a microscope based on interferometry, which allows us to simultaneously have the information of the phase in addition to the intensity information. In this research, we intend to measure the thickness of the red blood cell with the help of an interferometer and prepare a three-dimensional microscopic image of the blood cell. After contamination, a laser beam hits an optical beam splitter that can divide the light into two parts with equal intensities. Each of these wave fronts, after hitting the mirror, is directed to another beam splitter to be recombined. . Since the incident lights have traveled different optical paths, they have a phase difference with... 

Recently, Polypropylene has been extensively used in a variety of applications in the polymer industry, but its quite low stiffness and toughness limit this polyolefin’s application in the engineering functions; thus, the market of polymer blend and composite manufacturing has grown noticeably in the last few years. In the current project, short Flax fibers are used in order to reinforce the PP matrix. Firstly, Flax fibers were washed with the gentle and harsh condition during the alkalization process, then the optimized alkalization condition was determined through comparison of results from X-ray Diffraction (XRD ), Attenuated Total Reflectance FTIR (ATR-FTIR) and microscopic surface... 

Properties of viscoelastic of biopolymers have important role in cells structure; for example: cell motility depends on viscoelastic propertie of Actin polymer. therefore according to its importance ,in this thesis we intend to examine the viscoelastic modulus using Optical tweezers and dissipation theorem.this method is benefits than methods of active microrheology. for example this method can be used for low concentrations; because in the low concentrations, the exerting force will cause changing in the state of matter that here we investigate destructive force effect. we investigate viscoelastic of water for method accuracy then obtain viscoelastic of Kelcogel  

In the presence of spatially non-uniform electric field, a dielectric object can experience a translational force which is known as Dielectrophoresis (DEP) force. DEP is one of the most applicable methods in sorting mechanism of different biological cells. Moreover accurately measuring the DEP force in single cell level can lead to a valuable knwoledge about the electrical properties of various cells.In this thesis, first, the other electrokinetic forces in which the Electro-Osmosis (EO) force is the important one, have to be eliminated. Regarding that this effect is strongly dependent on the frequency of external E field, we have applied the external electric field at appropriate frequency... 

Nowadays, the development of different polymer blend nanocomposites is of great importance for achieving electrical and antistatic properties for various applications such as auto parts and the packaging industry. Immiscible polymer blends with conductive nanoparticles such as carbon nanotube, graphene, etc. can reach the conductivity threshold with low amounts of nanoparticles and produce desired electrical properties. In the present study, we have attempted to develop a polystyrene(PS)/ethylene-octene copolymer(EOC)/carbon nanotube(CNT) blend nanocomposite with suitable electrical conductivity. The compounding was performed by melt mixing at two weight percent of 80/20 and 50/50 (PS/EOC)...