title: TopSpot Vario: a novel microarrayer system for highly flexible and highly parallel picoliter dispensing.
abstract: The standard TopSpot technology has been successfully used in the recent years for the highly parallel nanoliter dispensing of bio-chemical substances for microarray printing. It is based on a pneumatically actuated printhead which enables non-contact microarray fabrication at a pitch of typically 500 microm. This paper reports on a new and improved way of operating the printheads termed TopSpot Vario technology, using an incompressible material between the piezo actuator and the dispensing medium. The advantage of the incompressible medium is the direct relation between the displacement amplitude and the ejected liquid volume. Earlier reports stated that the filling of the printheads is a key issue. In this paper we report on the implementation and characterization of a new printhead design including microchannels for bubble free priming of blind channels. Microarray fabrication was successfully conducted with four different types of protein.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory for MEMS Applications, Department of Microsystems Engineering (IMTEK), University of Freiburg, Georges-Koehler-Allee 106, 79110 Freiburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Chris P
authors.initials: CP
authors.lastname: Steinert
authors.forename: Kiril
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Kalkandjiev
authors.forename: Roland
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Zengerle
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Koltay
mesh_terms: D046228:Microarray Analysis / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods*