Stereomask Lithography for multi-object bio-patterning

The advent of biological micro-patterning techniques has given new impetus to many areas of biological research, including quantitative biochemical analysis, biosensing, and regenerative medicine. Conventional micropatterning techniques (e.g. photolithography and soft lithography) although have seen encouraging adaptation to biological applications, still have not completely addressed the needs of constructing multi-object biological microarrays with single cell resolution without requiring cleanroom access. In this abstract, we present a novel versatile biological lithography technique to achieve integrated multi-object patterning with high resolution and high adaptability to various biomaterials, referred to as the Stereomask Lithography (SML). It is based on serial placement of multiple biological objects using a novel three dimensional shadow mask with protection for previously patterned materials and a peg-in-hole interlayer alignment scheme.