Optical fibre gripper for high-performance 3D micromanipulation

Optical tweezers offer precise, non-contact control, but operate in a limited force regime and impose strict requirements on the characteristics of the targets as well as the environmental conditions 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 . Millimetre-scale mechanical tweezers can offer higher gripping force but are not suitable for precise manipulations 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 . Integrating microgrippers directly at the optical fibres provides a new approach for precise micromanipulation. However, existing fibre-integrated tweezers still face challenges in achieving high-performance manipulation of micro-objects (for example, single cells) within narrow spaces, mainly due to simplified architectures, constrained designs and millimetre-scale footprints 12 , 13 , 14 . Here we report a three-dimensional (3D) optical fibre gripper (OFG), which is fabricated by two-step, two-photon polymerization. The OFG consists of rigid photoresist microclaws and soft thermoresponsive hydrogel muscle doped with silver nanoparticles, and its size is only 38 × 38 × 61 μm 3 . The OFG exhibits a force-to-mass ratio of about 340 μN mg −1 , outperforming previously reported fibre-integrated tweezers by one to two orders of magnitude. The OFG can manipulate opaque particles, irregular micromechanical components and diverse single-cell types. We further demonstrated its potential in 3D microassembly of complex microdevices (bearings, shafts and gearboxes) and biomimetic sampling in the narrow environment (<300 μm). These results position the OFG as a compact fibre-tip manipulator for 3D micromanipulation, offering reversible and tunable gripping in an intermediate force regime between optical field trapping and millimetre-scale mechanical tweezers.