Tantalum-filament pulling device for fabrication of submicrometer fused-silica tips

A simple and low-cost pulling device for fused-silica capillaries was developed. By using a tantalum heating filament and the self-tension in a bent capillary, tips and constricted regions with outer diameters of approximately 1 microm and inner diameters of a few hundred nanometers could be reproducibly pulled from 50-microm-i.d., 375-microm-o.d. capillaries. The tips can be used in different applications such as microinjection, micromanipulation, and single-channel patch-clamp, injection ends for CE or as electrospray tips. Constricted capillaries with optimized dimensions to minimize cylindrical lensing effects and to match the size of a diffraction-limited laser focus can be used as optical detection windows in CE and micro-HPLC. Fused silica has several advantages over other glasses such as high melting temperature and superior optical and mechanical properties.