New Force Sensor and Pen Array Levelling System from NanoInk Enable Automation and Higher Throughput from DPN

NanoInk’s® NanoFabrication Systems Division is pleased to announce that it will launch its new force sensor and levelling devices at the Nanotech Conference and Expo, which is part of TechConnect World. NanoInk will also be presenting an oral paper on the technology behind the latest advancement of Dip Pen Nanolithography® (DPN®).

Force sensing with 1D levelling is a new feature which has been introduced on the NanoArrayer 3000™, which was launched last week by NanoInk’s Nano BioDiscovery division and is also available as an option on NanoInk’s NLP 2000. When combined with the automation software option, it facilitates automated pen array levelling and surface plane correction as well as wizards for printing micro and nano-arrays of uniform features across an entire glass microscope slide.

2D levelling incorporates a patented sapphire ball technology that enables large 2D arrays of high density pens to be levelled without contact with the substrate. This removes any cross contamination or the need for a sacrificial area of the substrate.

“There are multiple citations in the literature of applications in proteomics and genomics which will be enabled by such massively parallel high density printed arrays of features with low coefficients of variation,” said Tom Warwick, NanoInk’s general manager of its NanoFabrication Systems Division.

“Chips will be able to be printed with over a billion features in the 50nm to 10 micron size scale with densities greater than the current 55,000 2D pen array.” NanoInk’s NLP 2000 System is a desktop nanofabrication system that allows researchers to rapidly design and create custom engineered and functionalized surfaces on the micro and nanoscale, using DPN to transfer minute amounts of materials over a large, environmentally-controlled work area. DPN is a direct write, tip-based lithography technique. It operates under ambient conditions, allowing it to successfully deposit a wide range of organic, inorganic, and biological molecules. DPN platforms are capable of generating features as large as 10 μm and as small as 50 nm. NanoInk’s proprietary software suite and microfabricated DPN tools simplify the process of simultaneously depositing multiple materials, enabling researchers to rapidly pattern arbitrary micro-and nanoscale features.

Jason Haaheim, Ph.D., and a senior R&D engineer at NanoInk, will give a presentation titled “Advances in Direct-Write Nanoscale Deposition and Patterning” on Wednesday, June 15, at 1:50 p.m. in room 103.

The presentation will provide additional details on both 1D and 2D levelling. NanoInk will also exhibit at booth #1818 where its NLP 2000 desktop nanofabrication system will be available for demonstrations. The 2011 TechConnect World Conference and Expo is presented by the Nano Science and Technology Institute (NSTI) and the Clean Technology and Sustainable Industries Organization (CTSI). The conference will be held from Monday, June 13 through Thursday, June 16 at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston, Mass. TechConnect World is a unique combination of five interconnected conferences focused on technology commercialization: Clean Technology, Nanotech, BioNano, MicroTech and the TechConnect Summit.

NanoInk’s NanoFabrication Systems Division brings sophisticated nanofabrication to the laboratory desktop in an easy to use and affordable setting.

More information is available at the company article page.