Apparatus and method for fabricating, sorting, and integrating materials with holographic optical traps

A method for simultaneously producing multiple spatially resolved structures through photochemistry on a material using at least one of a plurality of holographic optical traps and an illumination spot in conjunction with an optical trap comprising the steps of;

• providing a diffractive optical element for receiving a laser beam and forming a plurality of separate laser beams;
• providing a focusing element downstream from said diffractive optical element, which cooperates with said focusing element to separately converge each of the laser beams to form a separate optical trap for processing at least one particle;
• providing a computer executing a program to control placement of the optical trap within a three-dimensional accessible volume and to provide independent modification of the optical properties of the optical trap;
• and
• tuning the intensity of the separate laser beams to achieve selected photochemical transformation of the material to facilitate controlled photochemistry in a volume associated with a diffraction-limited focal volume of the optical trap and an illumination spot, and manipulating the location and intensity of at least one of the optical trap and the illumination spot with one of the optical traps to selectively induce photochemical transformations in multiple regions to thereby fabricate multiple copies of a photochemically-defined pattern.