Pre-scored chip substrates provide new options for manufacturers of innovative diagnostic consumables

SCHOTT NEXTERION^® PreScora will be featured at the American Association of Clinical Chemistry’s annual scientific meeting and clinical lab expo in Anaheim, Ca., August 4 to 8.

Biotech companies have made remarkable strides developing lab-on-a-chip (LoaC) technology — ever smaller chips that integrate laboratory functions for rapid diagnostic testing. Performing the precise manufacturing steps that these remarkable diagnostic consumables require, such as the application of coating or the printing of barcodes, is getting more difficult and expensive as miniaturization progresses. SCHOTT now eases these challenges by offering NEXTERION^® PreScora. These pre-scored substrates can undergo processing steps as a whole and easily be fashioned to their final size afterwards. This lowers production cost significantly while enabling diagnostic consumable and equipment manufacturers to leverage the performance advantages of a high quality glass chip.

NEXTERION^® PreScora is readily available in several glass types, including BOROFLOAT^®, D263^®, MEMpax^®, or B270^® i, to offer manufacturers exactly the optical, thermal, or chemical properties they require. A range of functional coatings can be applied to each type of glass, creating a fully customizable offering. Thanks to SCHOTT’s century-long glass processing expertise, the final miniature chip still exhibits a very homogeneous coating to support adherence of biological samples. In addition, smooth edges and tight dimensional tolerances ease subsequent assembly steps.

Manufacturers can use standard equipment to process NEXTERION^® PreScora substrates and do not need to invest in expensive machinery. Since handling larger substrate formats is easier and more efficient, breaking one substrate into numerous chips afterward allows consumables manufacturers to take advantage of glass properties on a cost-effective basis.

The new product underlines SCHOTT’s aspiration to supply diagnostics companies with the widest selection of solutions used in NGS (next generation sequencing), LoaC (lab-on-a-chip), microarrays, and POC diagnostics (point of care). Their product range not only includes customizable coatings and formats, but also different basic materials: Polymer solutions are also available through SCHOTT’s recent acquisition of microfluidics contract manufacturing firm MINIFAB, a world leader in point of care diagnostics and life-science devices.

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