title: Microbeads on microposts: an inverted architecture for bead microarrays.
abstract: The rapid development of genomics and proteomics requires accelerated improvement of the microarrays density, multiplexing, readout capabilities and cost-effectiveness. The bead arrays are increasingly attractive because of their self-assembly-based fabrication, which alleviates many problems of top-down microfabrication. Here we present a simple, reliable, robust and modular technique for the fabrication of bead microarrays, which combines the directed assembling of beads in microstructures and PDMS-based replica molding. The beads are first self-assembled in pyramidal microwells fabricated by anisotropic etching of silicon substrates, then transferred on the apex of PDMS pyramids that replicate the silicon microstructures. The arrays are chemically and biochemically robust; they are spatially addressable and have the potential for being informationally addressable; and they appear to offer better readout capabilities than the classical microarrays.
authors.affiliation: BioNanoEngineering Labs, Faculty of Engineering and Industrial Science, Swinburne University of Technology, John Street, Hawthorn, Victoria 3122, Australia.
authors.forename: Luisa
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Filipponi
authors.forename: Prashant D
authors.initials: PD
authors.lastname: Sawant
authors.forename: Florin
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Fulga
authors.forename: Dan V
authors.initials: DV
authors.lastname: Nicolau
mesh_terms: D015374:Biosensing Techniques / Q000295:instrumentation*; D004129:Dimethylpolysiloxanes / Q000737:chemistry*; D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D008863:Microspheres; D040081:Protein Array Analysis / Q000295:instrumentation*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity
chemical_list: D004129:Dimethylpolysiloxanes; C013830:baysilon