Researchers have so far used light to maneuver single tiny objects with a focused laser beam by a technique called optical tweezers. Prof.Tang of Yale School of Engineering and Applied Science and his students and Thomas Baehr-Jones and Michael Hochberg of University of Washington have shown that the force of light can be harnessed to drive machines when the process is scaled to nano-proportions. The researchers showed that when the concentrated light was guided through a nanoscale mechanical device, significant light force could be generated to operate nanoscale machinery on a silicon chip. The researchers have demonstrated hundreds of devices on a single chip. Future applications can be for powering quantum information processing and sensing devices, as well as telecommunications that run at ultra-high speed consuming very low power.