In the last two decades, optical forces are combined with thermophoretic forces to enable trapping at reduced laser powers, thus resulting in minimized photon damage. By introducing light-absorbing elements (either particles or substrates), microscale temperature gradients are created, resulting in thermophoresis. Typically, particles (including biological objects such as cells, bacteria, DNA/RNA) drift towards the cold - resulting in particle repulsion using optical tweezers. Overcoming this limitation, different techniques such as beam shaping and solution modification with electrolytes and surfactants were used to successfully trap the objects. Laser cooling was also achieved with Ytterbium-doped yttrium lithium fluoride crystals to generate cold spots using lasers to achieve trapping with reduced photobleaching. The sample temperature has also been reduced to achieve optical trapping for a significantly increased selection of particles using optothermal tweezers for drug delivery applications.