The patterning of organic molecules onto surfaces with micrometer scale resolution is central to coatings, microarrays, and many other research fields, but only a very limited number of transformations are reliably used to covalently immobilize organics onto surfaces. There are few tools that can pattern organic molecules with sub-100 micrometer resolution, and fewer still, that do so with the reactions occuring in solution, where chemists have the most experience and control. Massively parallel tip-based lithography (TBL) – where arrays with as many as 10<sup>7</sup> elastomeric pyramids are mounted onto piezoacuators – has been used to pattern various organic materials with sub-1 micrometer feature diameters, and could provide a powerful new approach to investigating organic reations at interfaces. TBL has been used to pattern organic molecules covalently, but these demonstration are limited by the number of molecules that can be immobilized; typically only a single compound is printed across the surface. This work describes a printing apparatus that can immobilize potentially thousands of molecules in a single print through the combination of organic chemistry, microfluidics, and massively parallel TBL. Microfluidics were used to mix fluorescent molecules and explore the surface chemistry, while varying both dwell time and intensity of the UV light, which provided the optimal conditions for printing. Having the ability to combinatorially explore organic surface reactions will further the development of optical or electronic devices, substrates for tissue regeneration, and the investigation of biological systems using microarrays.

Combinatorial surface chemistry via massively parallel solution nanophotochemistry

255th National Meeting (2018)

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