The
New Standard in
High Precision Microcontact Printing
Silicon
Microarray™ Technology
Ultra
high precision micromachining capabilities and the unique physical
properties of single crystal silicon have been combined to create
a microcontact printing pin that delivers the highest quality
printed spots at the lowest cost available. Even though the microcontact
printing of microarrays of many types of biological samples is
now and will remain a mainstay of microcontact printing, recent
additional applications have emerged in the delivery of whole
cells, inorganic materials, hot melt adhesives and solder. On
these pages, you can learn about silicon
micromachining and how pins made
by this technique will allow practitioners of microcontact printing
to perform more accurate experiments, at a faster rate and at
a lower cost.
Silicon
Microcontact Printing
Advantages of
Silicon Microarray™ Technology
The
substantial, near term and direct benefits of the Silicon Microarray™
Technology for your microcontact printing applications include:
- Ability
to print from 96, 384 and 1536 source plates
- Highly
precise volumetric uptake, combined with the elimination of
prespotting phenomena and the ability of these pins to print
to dryness, greatly reduces waste of precious samples
- Microarray
pins with tip sizes from 50-100 µm available
- Uptake
volumes of 25-250 nL
- Print
volumes of less than 250 pL per spot
- All
pins are precisely identical for the highest reproducibility
in printing
- No
tip bending, blunting or mushrooming
- Super
elasticity of silicon provides 100% recovery from stresses below
the breakage point
- Non-flat
tip texturing provides highly uniform printed spots
For
additional technical specifications and printing data, a discussion
of performance attributes and to view samples of microcontact
printing by the silicon microarray spotting pins, please go to
the pins and holder technical information
page. To order the silicon microarray pins, upgrades or replacement
parts, to learn about use and maintenance of your pins and to
view which accessories are available, please use the links at
the top of this page.
The
development of Silicon Microarray™ Technology is supported
by the Biotechnology section of the Division of Design, Manufacture
and Industrial Innovation at the National Science Foundation (NSF).
Please
contact us
for additional information.
