Fabrication of silica opal array with high mechanical strength

This paper focuses on fabrication of opal structures by self-assembling silica spheres, which can be used as an array of high throughput and low cost reactors or micro-filters. The reactors can carry out hundreds different reactions in parallel; while there is about 50 nano-liter reagent consumed in each reactor. It not only provides large surface area for reaction, but also solves the issue of high throughput experiments. The mechanical strength of the opal has to be high enough to withstand fluid flushing during sample loading and cleaning. In this paper, the optimized process is developed to fabricate the robust and crack-less opal membrane.