Single-step manufacturing of femtoliter microwell arrays in a novel surface energy mimicking polymer

We report a novel polymer material formulation and stamp-molding technique that enable rapid single-step manufacturing of hydrophilic-in-hydrophobic microwell arrays. We developed a modified thiol-ene-epoxy polymer (mOSTE+) formulation that mimics the surface energy of its mold during polymerization. The polymer inherits the surface energy from the mold through molecular self-assembly, in which functional monomers self-assemble at the interface between the liquid prepolymer and the mold surface. Combining this novel mOSTE+ material with a stamp-molding process leads to simultaneous surface energy mimicking and micro-structuring. This method was used to manufacture microwells with hydrophilic bottom and hydrophobic sidewall, depressed in a surrounding hydrophobic surface. The microwell arrays were successfully tested for the self-assembly of 62∲000 femtoliter-droplets. Such femtoliter droplet arrays are useful for, e.g., digital ELISA and single cell/molecule analysis applications.