Electrohydrodynamic (EHD) dispensing of nanoliter DNA droplets for microarrays

In the present paper, we first demonstrated the possibility of electrohydrodynamic (EHD) dispensing method for preparing nanoliter probe DNA droplets on surfaces in DNA microarrays. To study the effect of an electric field on the dynamic behavior of pendent DNA droplet, visualization experiments with three kinds of electrode shapes are performed. In the early stage of droplet dispensing, it is shown that applied electric field assists a gravitational force exerted on DNA droplet. The pendent droplet is elongated in the parallel direction of applied electric field. However, after making fluid bridge between electrodes, it is shown that the electric force accelerates the capillary breaking of droplet by assisting a surface tension force exerted on droplet surface. Specifically, nanoliter dispensing volume (2 nL) is obtained in the needle-type electrode configuration. In addition, for the case of hydrophobic electrode surface, it is shown that the dispensing volume and spot size are remarkably decreased. Under the high relative humidity condition, it is observed that spot size is rapidly increased because of reduction in evaporation rate on droplet surface during the dispensing procedure. On the other hand, it is obtained that the spot size is not changed significantly in the wide range of DNA concentration from 1 to 10,000 nM. To monitor the influence of high electric voltage on DNA stability, we prepared a silicon-based chip with five capture probes for pathogens related with respiratory infectious diseases by EHD dispensing method. From the examination, it is clearly confirmed that pathogens are detected and the effective signal levels of pathogenic bacteria after hybridization are retained. Consequently, it is found that EHD dispensing method can be used to make cost-effective DNA microarrays with no thermal and electrical influences on DNA properties.