This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I Project proposes to develop a disposable polymer based microarray printing device that will cost a small fraction of the current state of the art devices and at the same time offer significant improvements in reliability and performance. In spite of wide spread use for microcontact printing of DNA and protein microarrays, the manually manufactured, sharpened metal pins used for array fabrication remain very expensive both in terms of purchase cost and constant maintenance and cleaning. Polymer pins will be manufactured using a combination of silicon micromachining and electroforming to prepare a very high precision positive micromold, which will be needed to produce the fine features necessary to control fluid flow to the printing tip.
The commercial application of the proposed plastic pins will be on a broad range of biological research activities that use printed microarrays. Some of the advantages of the product will include better wettability, parallel manufacturing, very precise dimensions, capability to form smaller and more uniform spots, disposable, and availability at less than 0.5% of the current cost of metal pins.
