The Partially Etched-Through Channel pin, or PETC, is said to be the most efficient, consistent, and cost-effective spotting tool on the market
Unlike the traditional split pin design represented by the current technology, PETCs have internal conduits that are only exposed to the outer surface on one side of the shaft.
This unique design acts analogously to a flow restrictor, resulting in extremely precise metering of fluid deposition during microarray production.
Internal testing has revealed that certain PETC designs can deposit as many as 2000 features per sample uptake, with %CVs as low as 2% for the first 400 spots.
As with earlier silicon printing devices, PETC pins can be micromachined in parallel, resulting in identical tools with precise features that can be manufactured much less expensively than competing instruments.
Further advantages of the PETC pins are improved mechanical strength, greater ease of cleaning, and decreased sample evaporation rates compared to their earlier silicon counterparts.
A second addition to the silicon toolkit for microarray production is represented by the printing microtiter plate.
This device consists of an array of wells, each of which possesses its own closed capillary nozzle tip that is rendered individually compliant by connection to the body of the microtiter plate by silicon springs.
Each well can be filled with an automated liquid dispenser or by utilizing a fused array of glass capillary tubes, and the device is subsequently touched to a substrate in order to print hundreds of spots simultaneously.
The silicon microtiter plate is available with 300 or 1200 wells and can deposit millions of features per hour with %CVs as low as 2%.
Parallel Synthesis Technologies is dedicated to the continued improvement of microarray printing capabilities and making them available to the scientific community.
