Immobilizing biomolecules near the diffraction limit.

Our group has previously shown that biomolecules containing disulfide bridges in close proximity to aromatic residues can be immobilized, through covalent bonds, onto thiol derivatized surfaces upon UV excitation of the aromatic residue(s). We have also previously shown that our new technology can be used to print arrays of biomolecules and to immobilize biomolecules according to any specific pattern on a planar substrates with micrometer scale resolution. In this paper we show that we can immobilize proteins according to diffraction patterns of UV light. We also show that the feature size of the immobilized patterns can be as small as the diffraction limit for the excitation light, and that the immobilized patterns correspond to the diffraction pattern used to generate it. The flexibility of this new technology will in principle make it possible to create any pattern of biomolecules onto a substrate, which can be generated by a UV diffraction pattern. Such patterns can have sub-micron feature sizes and could therefore be of great relevance for present and future nanotechnological applications.