Electron tweezers reveal their pluck

BEAMS of electrons can pick up and move tiny objects, just like optical tweezers that manipulate items using light.

Vladimir Oleshko at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Maryland, and a colleague found the effect while studying tiny droplets of aluminium and silicon using an electron microscope. When they moved the scope's electron beam, nanoparticles of aluminium moved too.

Optical tweezers work thanks to the force generated when a particle refracts light, which pushes the object to the most intense part of a beam. Electron beams generate the same force, says Oleshko (Ultramicroscopy, DOI: 10.1016/j.ultramic.2011.08.015). The new tweezers have a resolution and sensitivity 1000 times finer than optical techniques. Oleshko hopes to use them in the near future to manipulate single atoms.

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