“Dip-Pen” Nanolithography in Registry with Photolithography for Biosensor Development

“Dip-pen” nanolithography (DPN) was used to deposit molecules of interest onto silicon oxide surfaces grown by a number of different deposition techniques and prepared by photolithography and wet-chemical etching. Using this method, layers of fluorescently tagged silazanes were placed within 50 nm of micrometer-scale features with a 50 nm resolution on oxide substrates. It was also shown that these distances are even smaller when thiol molecules are used with Au substrates. Furthermore, proteins are immobilized on the silicon oxide substrates with sub-micrometer resolution.