Massively parallel dip-pen nanolithography of heterogeneous supported phospholipid multilayer patterns.

Phospholipids are an essential component of biological membranes, as their lyotropic liquid-crystalline nature enA them to self-assemble into two-dimensional bilayer sheets under physiological conditions. [1] Micro- and nanoscopic heterogeneities, such as lipid rafts [2, 3] and focal adhesions, [4, 5] are vital to the biological function of lipid bilayer membranes. Lithographically patterned phospholipid membranes can be used as cell-surface models [6] and have been used in several applications, including biochemical sensors, [7] drug screening and delivery, [8, 9] the analysis of cell–cell interactions, [3, 10] and to address fundamental biological questions in membrane trafficking. [11] However, in order to create model systems that are capable of mimicking the structural complexity of biological membranes, a method is necessary that allows both high-resolution patterning and parallel deA of different phospholipid materials over large areas. Here, we demonstrate that a new, noncovalent modality of dip-pen nanolithography (DPN) is a suitable approach for the rapid fabrication and integration of large-scale phospholipid nanostructure libraries on a variety of substrates. This method provides a lateral resolution down to 100 nm and an areal throughput of 5 cm 2 min 1 . Previously, micropatterned lipid bilayers on solid supports have been prepared using several approaches. A microarrayer that deposits nanoliter droplets of phospholipid solutions can be used to create arrays of supported lipid bi