Optoelectrokinetics (OEK), a fusion of optics, electrokinetics, and microfluidics, has been demonstrated to offer a series of extraordinary advantages in the manipulation and fabrication of micro/nanomaterials, such as requiring no mask, programmability, flexibility, and rapidness. In this paper, we summarize a variety of differently structured OEK chips, followed by a discussion on how they are fabricated and the ways in which they work. We also review how three differently sized polystyrene beads can be separated simultaneously, how a variety of nanoparticles can be assembled, and how micro/nanomaterials can be fabricated into functional devices. Another focus of our paper is on mask-free fabrication and assembly of hydrogel-based micro/nanostructures and its possible applications in biological fields. We provide a summary of the current challenges facing the OEK technique and its future prospects at the end of this paper.
Keywords: fabrication; micro/nanomaterials; optically-induced dielectrophoresis; optoelectrokinetics; separation.