Dip pen nanolithography®: A maturing technology for high-throughput flexible nanopatterning

Precision nanoscale deposition is a fundamental requirement for much of current nanoscience research. Further, depositing a wide range of materials as nanoscale features onto diverse surfaces is a challenging requirement for nanoscale processing systems. As a high resolution scanning probe-based direct-write technology, Dip Pen Nanolithography® (DPN®) satisfies and exceeds these fundamental requirements. Herein we specifically describe the massive scalability of DPN with two dimensional probe arrays (the 2D nano PrintArray™). In collaboration with researchers at Northwestern University, we have demonstrated massively parallel nanoscale deposition with this 2D array of 55,000 pens on a centimeter square probe chip. (To date, this is the highest cantilever density ever reported.) This enables direct-writing flexible patterns with a variety of molecules, simultaneously generating 55,000 duplicates at the resolution of single-pen DPN. To date, there is no other way to accomplish this kind of patterning at this unprecedented resolution. These advances in high-throughput, flexible nanopatterning point to several compelling applications. The 2D nano PrintArray can cover a square centimeter with nanoscale features and pattern 10⁷ μm² per hour. These features can be solid state nanostructures, metals, or using established templating techniques, these advances enable screening for biological interactions at the level of a few molecules, or even single molecules; this in turn can enable engineering the cell-substrate interface at sub-cellular resolution.