Novel 3D lithographically-prepared solid-phase surfaces made from SU-8 for next generation sequencing

Abstract

A solid-phase PCR strategy on a novel 3-D substrate consisting of 2 μm SU-8 pillars that are >5 μm in height have been lithographically patterned onto quartz substrates and is reported. The surface chemistry of SU-8 allows the printing of PCR primers only onto the SU-8 pillars but not on the quartz substrate, which creates highly ordered arrays of clusters making imaging of the clonally-amplified DNA using high density CCDs more efficient. The 3D architecture employed herein also provides significantly improved signal-to-noise ratios for the next phase of the assay (e.g. sequencing-by-synthesis (SbS)) in next generation sequencing (NGS) instruments.