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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2010 Aug 9.
Published in final edited form as: Mol Cell Biomech. 2010 Mar 2;3(2):91–105. doi: 10.1007/s12195-010-0109-z

TABLE 1.

Specifications for three methods commonly used to manipulate single molecules (adapted from Neuman et al.62).

Specification AFM Magnetic trap Optical trap
Bandwidth (Hz) 1000 10–1000 50–5000
Stiffness (pN nm−1) 1–105 10−6 0.005–1
Spatial resolution (nm) 0.1–1 2–10 0.1–5
Force range (pN) 5–103 10−3–104 0.1–100