Biotechnology: Biomolecule Arrays Using Functional Combinatorial Particle Patterning on Microchips (Adv. Funct. Mater. 12/2012)

On page 2503 Alexander Nesterov-Mueller, Frank Breitling, and co-workers present a microarray system based on a microelectronic chip that allows for a versatile combinatorial molecule synthesis with very high density and, due to the intrinsic alignment, high and reproducible precision. Patterning the chip surface with different microparticle types that embed different monomers allows simultaneous elongation of several thousand different molecule types layer-by-layer.