Abstract: Optical tweezers are powerful tools for optical trapping, micromanipulation and force transduction. The calculations of three factors have significantly influences on optical tweezers trapping force including particle size, the refractive index and beam type have been carried out. The result shows that the trapping efficiency is opti- mized for a particle with a size closing to the wavelength and a relatively large refractive index in a trap formed with properly-chosen beam type.

Key words: optical tweezers, optical tweezers trapping force, Q efficiency, optical trap stiffness