Rapid photochemical surface patterning of proteins in thiol-ene based microfluidic devices

The suitable optical properties of thiol-ene polymers combined with the ease of modifying their surface for the attachment of recognition molecules make them ideal candidates in many biochip applications. This paper reports the rapid one-step photochemical surface patterning of biomolecules in microfluidic thiol-ene chips. This work focuses on thiol-ene substrates featuring an excess of thiol groups at their surface. The thiol-ene stoichiometric composition can be varied to precisely control the number of surface thiol groups available for surface modification up to an average surface density of 136 ± 17 SH nm(-2). Biotin alkyne was patterned directly inside thiol-ene microchannels prior to conjugation with fluorescently labelled streptavidin. The surface bound conjugates were detected by evanescent wave-induced fluorescence (EWIF), demonstrating the success of the grafting procedure and its potential for biochip applications.