Slide Mount Apparatus

Constructing the Microscope Slide Mount

For several reasons, the microscope slide mount is important piece of the optical tweezers set up. First, it needs to be sturdy enough to damp vibrations that move through the table and the lab. Since the Brownian motion measurements are observing particle oscillations of fractions of micrometers, any instability in the slide mount will skew the data. Secondly,it needs to be adjustable in all three dimensions focus the sample, and scan over the slide surface. Thirdly, the mount must be piezo - controlled in the horizontal directions to perform Stokes measurements, and Ideally it will be piezo-controlled in the vertical direction to finely focus the objective, without having to touch the slide mount.