Mass spectrometric characterization of DNA microarrays as a function of primary ion species

TOF-SIMS is undoubtedly a highly useful technique for identifying hybridized DNA on PNA biosensor chips. It is suitable for studying the complexity of the immobilization and hybridization processes and may provide a rapid method for DNA diagnostics. With the absence of the labeling procedure and the simultaneous increase of the phosphate signal as a result of increasing DNA sequence length, this technique comes to be especially useful for the direct analysis of genomic DNA.