AVS 47th International Symposium
    Biomaterial Interfaces Wednesday Sessions
       Session BI-WeP

Paper BI-WeP6
Individually Addressable Solid Supported Membranes Formed by Micromolding in Capillaries

Wednesday, October 4, 2000, 11:00 am, Room Exhibit Hall C & D

Session: Poster Session
Presenter: S. Kuenneke, WWU Muenster, Germany
Authors: S. Kuenneke, WWU Muenster, Germany
A. Janshoff, WWU Muenster, Germany
H. Fuchs, WWU Muenster, Germany
Correspondent: Click to Email
The formation of spatially individually addressable, patterned biomaterial on surfaces is of paramount interest for the development of biosensors, combinatorial libraries, and high-throughput systems for pharma screening. Particularly, the combination of high resolution scanning devices with lithographically structured biomolecules is advantageous if the amount of biomaterial is limited or if the number of surface reactions is vast. The most versatile matrix for embedding and immobilizing natural and artificial receptor molecules such as functionalized lipids or proteins are solid supported membranes. Here we present a new type of microstructured membrane compartments, which are individually addressable by the operator on a common substrate on a nanometer to micrometer scale. The membrane segments are designed to be accessible to all available microscopic techniques and surface analysis tools. We developed a general procedure to generate patterned lipid bilayers by using a three dimensional network of capillaries as provided by microfluidic networks. The fluidic network (elastomer stamp) was formed from polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) using an appropriate master displaying the inverted desired structure, which can be conveniently obtained by optical lithography of silicon wafers. Lipid bilayers were deposited by fusing unilamellar vesicles on the hydrophilic glass substrate. Visualization of the liposome flow in the capillaries and the formed planar bilayers was performed using a confocal laser scanning microscope. The planar bilayers were subsequently imaged by means of scanning force microscopy revealing a typical height of 4-6 nm.