Ceramic capillaries for use in microarray fabrication.

We have used ceramic capillary tips generally used in the microelectronics industry for the production of DNA microarrays. The ceramic tips improve the morphology of microarray elements, allow higher element density, and increase printing tip life over the customary slotted stainless-steel pins. Ceramic tips are less expensive than steel pins and allow printing from 1536-well sample source plates. In this work, we describe experiments that establish printing performance of the ceramic tips and hybridization experiments that show that DNA hybridization is unaffected by the choice of tip material.