I want to emphasize how incredibly weak these traps are. In order to apply a maximum force of 200 pN orthogonally to the path of the laser to a 1 micron polystyrene sphere requires approximately 1 W of laser power. Further, it takes about five times more laser power to apply the same amount of force axially (i.e., along the path of the beam) compared to transversely (i.e., in the plane orthogonal to the beam).
He does use optical trapping forces, but is able to create exotic traps such as vortexes with the help of spatial light modulators. My understanding of the physics is not very good but here are some links to his papers (the second one has a cool visualization of a solenoidal tractor beam)