Patent granted to Arrayjet for microarray fabrication
Arrayjet announced that a European patent had been granted for 'Fabrication of microarrays by inkjet printheads'. Used inside the company's Aj100 and Aj120 microarrayers this technology enables samples to be picked up from 96 or 384 well plates and then printed in arrays ranging from a few spots in a high density format to slides containing 43,000 elements or more.
Most people will be familiar with the technology through use of inkjet printers in their daily routine. "The tricky part was getting a number of biological samples into the print head while keeping them separate", said Dr Howard Manning, founder and Technical Director of Arrayjet. "We then let the print head take over and do what it has been designed to do. That is producing rows of uniform and consistent spots."
With its core technology now officially recognised, Arrayjet are talking to other manufacturers about compatible applications outside of microarray technology, and are also considering new variants of its current instruments.
Other news from the department research and development
