Arryx

Arryx, Inc. develops tools and technology for manipulation and measurement on the micro and nano lengthscales. Arryx's technology and products center around optical trapping. They specialize in holographic optical trapping, a technique for creating and moving many optical traps at once. Their technology is commercialized in the form of a flagship research tool, the BioRyx 200 optical trapping system. Arryx has investigated the application of the technique to an array of problems in different fields including telecommunications, agriculture, healthcare, basic research, and forensics.

Arryx was founded in the fall of 2000, based on technology invented at the University of Chicago by Professor David Grier and his student Eric Dufresne a couple years earlier. Their BioRyx 200 system was released in early 2002 and won the R&D 100 award later that year. An IR version of the system was released in 2004 for broader application to biological systems, with support of additional imaging methods including fluorescent microscopy.

In July 2006, Arryx was acquired by Haemonetics, with whom they had an ongoing partnership. Their announcement states that Arryx personnel and operations will remain in Chicago. They continue to support and expand their product line of research instruments, based around the BioRyx 200, as they pursue development of the underlying holographic optical trapping technologies and applications of that technology in various markets.