A highly parallel piezoelectric printing device for micro-array technology

Abstract

A 16/spl times/24 dispenser that prints in a micro-array format at a 500 /spl mu/m spacing is presented. The dispenser is built from laminated flexible Polyimide sheets to form a 2-d printing array. The dispenser is continuously loaded from a 384-well plate format and shoots upward. This makes the device very easy to handle without any robotics. Droplets of 65 pL are dispensed parallel at a speed of 1.78 m/s at 180 Volts. A single channel has a CV value of 8.6% and a 24-channel dispenser has a CV value of 20% for a common driving signal.