(584o) Fabrication of Protein Dots Pattern Via Template Assisted Particle Lithography

Fabrication of protein patterns in micro-scale and nano-scale has gained tremendous strides over the years due to their wide range of applications in the field of tissue engineering, biosensors, and live cellular microfluidics experiments. Previously, our lab had developed an inexpensive and effective protein patterning technique based on particle lithography to fabricate hexagonal patterns of protein dots (450-1200 nm diameter). These substrates have been utilized to investigate the role of protein spatial organization on neutrophil spreading. One potential limitration of this particle lithography technique along with other self-assembled methods is the limited control on particle separation and overall particle patterns. The center-to-center separations along with the size of protein dots formed are intrinsically related to each other based on the diameters of the beads used to form the monolayer, severely limiting in choice feature of size-to-separation. In this work, we demonstrated that photolithography can be used to direct the deposition location of PS beads via template assisted self-assembly (TASA) mechanism.  As a result, by controlling the beads’ deposition patterns, the protein dot patterns in subsequent steps can then be easily manipulated without changing the dot size.