Optimized capillary based microarray used for DNA analysis

Microarray is an very useful tool for nucleic acid detection, but the procedure is labor intensive and time consuming. Microfluidic chip-based microarray saves time with better performance, while the low spot density and probe number limit its applications in many related fields. To develop high performance microarray with higher spot density and probe number, a method is reported here to prepare microarray in a capillary by generating probe droplets array. The probes in droplets are immobilized onto the inner wall of the capillary to form an one-dimensional probe array, and then a sample solution is introduced to hybridize with the probe array. This paper demonstrated the droplets array, probe array and hybridized spots array which were generated inside the capillary, then the cross contamination caused by the generation of droplets array was evaluated. Data showed that the cross contamination was only a very small portion. It can be regarded as the background and eliminated by subtracting.