Active probes and mirofluidic ink delivery for Dip Pen Nanolithography™

Dip Pen Nanolithography (DPN(TM)) is a scanning probe technique for nanoscale lithography: A sharp tip is coated with a functional molecule (the "ink") and then brought into contact with a surface where it deposits ink via a water meniscus. The DPN process is a direct-write pattern transfer technique with nanometer resolution and is inherently general with respect to usable inks and substrates including biomolecules such as proteins and oligonucleotides. We present functional extensions of the basic DPN process by showing actuated multi-probes as well as microfluidic ink delivery. We present the fabrication process and characterization of such active probes that use the bimorph effect to induce deflection of individual cantilevers as well as the integration of these probes. We also developed the capability to write with multiple inks on the probe array permitting the fabrication of multi-component nanodevices in one writing session. For this purpose, we fabricate passive microfluidic devices and present microfluidic behavior and ink loading performance of these components.