M Salomo, K Kegler, C Gutsche, M Struhalla, J Reinmuth, W Skokow, U Hahn, F Kremer
Optical tweezers are microscopic tools with extraordinary precision in the determination of the position (±2 nm) of a colloid (diameter: ∼2.0 μm) in 3D-space and in the measurement of small forces in the range between 0.1 and 100 pN (pN=10(-12) N). Experiments are reported in which single double-stranded (ds)-DNA chains of different length [2,000 base pairs (bp), 3,000, 4,000, and 6,000 bp] are spanned between two colloidal particles by use of appropriate molecular linkers. For the forces applied (≤40 pN) a fully reversible and well reproducible force-extension dependence is found...
2006: Colloid and Polymer Science